LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

p. Copyright No._ 



Chap. copyri 

Shell* 




UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



REV. DR. MILLER'S BOOKS. 



SILENT TIMES. 

MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE. 

THE EVERY DAY OF LIFE. 

THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER. 

THINGS TO LIVE FOR. 

THE STORY OF A BUSY LIFE. 

PERSONAL FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 

THE JOY OF SERVICE. 

DR. MILLER'S YEAR BOOK. 

GLIMPSES THROUGH LIFE'S WINDOWS. 

THE HIDDEN LIFE. 

YOUNG PEOPLE'S PROBLEMS. 



BOOKLETS. 



GIRLS; FAULTS AND IDEALS. 
YOUNG MEN ; FAULTS AND IDEALS. 
SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE. 
THE BLESSING OF CHEERFULNESS. 
A GENTLE HEART. 
BY THE STILL WATERS. 
THE MARRIAGE ALTAR. 
THE SECRET OF GLADNESS. 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY, 

NEW YORK AND BOSTON. 



STRENGTH AND BEAUTY 



J. R. MILLER, D.D. 

AUTHOR OF "SILENT TIMES," " MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE, 1 

"BUILDING OF CHARACTER," "THINGS TO LIVE 

FOR," ETC. 



Honor and majesty are before him : 
Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary . 

Psalms. 



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PREFACE. 



The favor with which the author's former volumes 
have been received encourages him to send out 
another. In all these books the aim is to interpret 
the spiritual teachings of the Bible in the language 
of common life, that men and women, in paths of 
duty and in the stress of struggle or sorrow, may 
more readily get the inspiration, cheer, comfort, and 
help which they need. 

This volume has much in it that is stimulative. 
It aims not at making life easy for its readers, but 
rather at making them brave and strong to do their 
best. That is the truest help one can give to others, 
whether it be in a personal friendship or in a book. 

J. R. M. 

Philadelphia, 
U. S. A. 



iii 



CONTENTS. 



I. Strength and Beauty . . . 

II. The Christian and His Rights 

III. The Voice of Strangers 

IV. " Sweet Will of God 1 ' . . 
V. Finding One's Soul . . . 

VI. Not for Self but Christ . 

VII. Being a Branch .... 

VIII. Shallow Lives 

IX. Crowding out the Good 

X. Things to Leave Undone . 

XI. Its Fruit in Its Season . . 

XII. The True Religion . . . 

XIII. The Beauty of the Imperfect 

XIV. How to Meet Temptation . 
XV. At the Full Price . . . 

XVI. The Blessing of Hardness . 

XVII. The Ministry of Hindrances 

XVIII. In Time of Defeat . . . 

XIX. The Duty of Fault-Finding 

XX. The Duty of Laughter . 

XXI. Minding the Rests . . . 

, XXII. The Cure of Weariness 

XXIII. Judged as We Judge . . . 

XXIV. Every Day an Easter . . 
XXV. The Sacredness of Opportunity 

v 



STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 



CHAPTER I. 

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

... I said, I '11 gaze upon my Lord 

And know his face, 
That so my motives in a blest accord 

May, by his grace, 
Fashion a life growing in every feature 

Like him I love, 
So that, within, without, another creature, 

Taught from above, 
I, copying him and growing in his grace, 
May in his likeness live, then see him face to face. 

J. W. M. 

We should never be content with any mark 
but the highest. To strive for that which is 
less than the best is unworthy of a child of God. 
It is a great thing, also, to have a measure of 
definiteness in one's ideal. Merely to want to 
be good may be a very vague longing. It is 
better if we know just what goodness is, if we 



2 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

can analyze it and resolve it into two or three 
simple elements. 

We read, " God is love." That is very beau- 
tiful. Love suggests all that is gracious, kindly, 
gentle, unselfish, merciful. But its meaning is 
so vast that thinking of it is like looking into 
the sun. The light dazzles our eyes. We 
understand it better when we study it in its 
elements. 

So it is with the word "good." We wish to 
be good, but what does the word mean? What 
are some of the elements which make up good- 
ness? Strength and beauty are such elements. 
Strength and beauty blend in all truly noble 
character. Strength alone is not always lovely; 
it may be stern, oppressive, unjust, cruel, or sel- 
fish. Among animals, hugeness is not itself win- 
ning; it may be very uncomely, though strong. 
Beauty alone may not be pleasing, being weak, 
lacking in firmness and truth. There are plants 
that are lovely in their delicacy, but so frail as 
to be scarcely more than a dream, so fragile are 
they. But when the two qualities, strength and 
beauty, are united, we have a character which 



STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 3 

wins the approval of God and the commenda- 
tion of men. 

The Bible abounds in exhortations to be 
strong. God is represented as serenely strong, 
and those who would be like him must also be 
strong. Weakness is never commended. God 
is infinitely patient with the weak. It was said 
of Jesus that he would not break the bruised 
reed nor quench the smoking flax. In these 
words of inimitable beauty Christ's sympathy 
with weakness is depicted. His whole life was 
in harmony with this representation. His gentle- 
ness was infinite. All weak and weary things 
found in him a shelter and a friend. 

One of the legends of the life of Jesus tells of 
a day when he was walking beside the sea, when 
suddenly a sea-bird, driven by a storm that had 
been sweeping on the farther shore, came flut- 
tering towards him, and, panting, fell on the 
sand at his feet and died. Then he took the 
bird and laid it in his hand and breathed on it 
— when lo ! the bird fluttered a moment and 
then flew aloft, its life restored. It is only a 
legend, and yet it was just in this gentle way 



4 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

that Jesus dealt always with human weakness 
and failure which fled to him out of life's storms. 

Yet his treatment of weakness was not that 
of compassion merely; he sought always to 
make the weak strong. He was a physician, 
whose mission it was not merely to nurse the 
sick, but to heal them. He was not satisfied to 
pity the feeble and the broken ; he sought also 
to bind up and restore, to breathe life into that 
which was dead. In his hands the bruised reed 
became whole again, waving as before in grace- 
ful beauty. As he breathed upon the smoking 
flax, the dying spark was fanned into a flame, 
and the lamp burned brightly once more. 

Weakness was not beautiful to the eye of 
Christ ; it was something imperfect, faulty, 
lacking. It was something, too, which he 
sought to bring back to its true, normal state. 
He came not to destroy, but to fulfil, that is, to 
fill full. He rejected nothing because it was in 
ruin; he sought to build up the ruin into a 
temple of beauty. In most wonderful way was 
this the mission of Jesus Christ. He came to a 
lost world to be its Saviour. He came to make 



STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 5 

the weak strong, the soiled white and clean, the 
outcast children of God. 

Thus, always, the work of Christ on human 
lives is towards strength. While he is infinitely 
gentle with weakness it is not his desire that it 
shall remain weakness; he would build it up 
into strength. We have but to recall the char- 
acter of his work upon his own disciples to find 
illustration of this. What were they when he 
first found them? Unlettered fishermen, igno- 
rant, full of faults, dull and slow learners, stum- 
bling continually. What were they when they 
had been in his school for three years? Men of 
marvellous power, who turned the world upside- 
down by their preaching. He made their 
weakness strength. The object of all spiritual 
culture is the same — to take feeble little ones 
and train them into heroes of faith. It is never 
Christ's desire that we shall remain feeble. We 
begin as children, but we are to grow. The 
work of the Church is the perfecting of the 
saints, that we may all attain unto full-grown 
men, unto the measure of the stature of the ful- 
ness of Christ. God wants us to be strong. 



6 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

The work of redemption is restoration. Noth- 
ing incomplete is yet perfect. There may be 
much that is lovely in what is still imperfect, 
but the best is yet to be seen. Strength is the 
divine ideal for every life, that towards which 
divine grace is ever leading us. In the new life, 
the risen life, when perfected, there will be no 
trace of infirmity or feebleness. " It is sown in 
weakness ; it is raised in power." Angels in 
heaven are strong, and we shall be as the 
angels. Those who always have been captives 
of infirmity will be released from all weakness 
and weariness, and will become strong in the 
holy strength of God. 

Beauty is another quality of character which 
is everywhere commended in the Scriptures. 
Grace is beauty. God is beautiful. Charles 
Kingsley, when dying, was heard by his daugh- 
ter to whisper, " How beautiful God is ! M An 
Old Testament prayer runs, " Let the beauty 
of the Lord our God be upon us." We read 
of strength and beauty in God's sanctuary. 
St. Paul enjoins that, among other qualities, 
" whatsoever things are lovely " shall be in the 



STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. J 

vision of life into which we aim to fashion our 
character. 

Humanity was made to be beautiful. God's 
ideal for man was spotless loveliness — man was 
made at first in God's image. But sin has left 
its trail everywhere. We see something of its 
debasement wherever we go. What ruins sin 
has wrought ! 

Christ was infinitely compassionate with the 
sinner. We remember how he went down even 
among the outcast, like one searching for pearls. 
Respectable people sneered at his interest in 
the fallen as if he were himself like them. 
Never was there a sinner so low that Jesus 
would not sit down beside him and be his 
friend. 

But it was not because sin was beautiful to 
him — the smallest sin was loathsome, a terri- 
ble blot in his sight. Yet he was infinitely 
compassionate towards the worst sinner, because 
he knew that the sinner might yet become a 
child of God. He went among the lost, not 
because he preferred the company of the lost, 
but because he would save them. He brought 



8 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

from these quests many a trophy, many a gem 
that has been shining in his crown ever since. 
He found one of his apostles among outcast 
publicans, and the name of Matthew is bright 
now with heavenly radiance. All Christ's work 
of grace is towards the restoration in human 
souls of the beauty of the Lord. He sees in 
the rough block the imprisoned angel, and 
seeks to set him free. 

This world is full of marvellous beauty. 
Everything in nature is lovely. When heaven 
is described the words that are used are those 
which suggest the most dazzling and radiant 
splendor. The streets are paved with gold, the 
walls are built of precious stones, the gates are 
great pearls, the sea is of glass, the light is 
transfiguration glory. This is the home of man 
that is to be — saved, restored, perfected man. 

All the precepts of the Bible are towards the 
fashioning of beauty in every redeemed life. 
We are to put away all that is sinful, all mar- 
ring, every blot and blemish, every unholy 
desire, feeling, and affection, everything that 
would defile, and put on whatsoever is lovely 



STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. g 

and Christ-like. The one great work of Christ 
in Christian lives is the fashioning of holiness in 
them. We are to grow away from our deformi- 
ties, our faults and infirmities, our poor, dwarfed, 
stunted life, into spiritual beauty. The mark 
set before us is the likeness of Christ, which, at 
last, we shall attain. 

Strength and beauty are not incompatible ; 
they are complements of each other. Perfect 
strength is always beautiful and perfect beauty 
is always strong. In every Christian life and 
character the two qualities should be combined. 
Yet not always is it so. We find sometimes the 
sturdy elements — integrity, justice, courage, 
without the beauty of grace and tenderness. 
Then sometimes we find the gentle qualities — 
sympathy, love, compassion, kindness, without 
the rugged virtues which are so necessary in a 
complete character. In both cases there is a 
lack. Neither strength nor beauty without the 
other is complete ; each is but a fragment. 
Only when the two are united is the life really 
Christ-like. 

Spiritual beauty is holiness. Nothing unclean 



IO STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

is lovely. Character is Christ-like only when it is 
both strong and beautiful. Sometimes there is 
a tendency to exalt the gentle qualities, but, 
if there be not strength as well, the life can 
only be wrecked in the world's temptations. 
The key to all noble character is masterly self- 
control. Not to be lord of one's self is to be a 
captive. " He that hath no rule over his own 
spirit is like a city that is broken down, and 
without walls, " wrote the wise man. 

The life that is complete in God's sight must 
be a life rich in blessing to others. Uselessness 
never can be pleasing to the Master. Jesus 
said much about fruit — fruitfulness is the test 
of a life. Neither the strength nor the beauty 
of a seed is in itself. Imagine an acorn, which 
has been picked up by some one, carried into a 
beautiful room and laid on the mantel-piece, 
congratulating itself on its escape from the 
usual fate of acorns — falling into the ground 
to be buried away in the darkness. Imagine it 
saying : " How fortunate I am ! Here I have a 
warm home in a dry and cheerful place. I lie 
in this quiet room all day and people see my 



STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. II 

beauty. How I pity other acorns which have 
to stay out in the cold and rain and sink away 
into the muddy earth ! " Yet we know well 
that this acorn's lot is by no means enviable. 
It is kept dry and safe, but it never can reach 
God's thought for it in this way. Only when 
it gives itself away to die in the earth does it 
become either truly beautiful or strong. Then it 
grows into a majestic oak whose strength defies 
the wildest storms and whose beauty wins the 
admiration of all who behold it. 

No human life can ever truly please God by 
saving itself, by keeping itself from self-denial 
and sacrifice. No matter how magnificent its 
natural powers, nor how graceful its form and its 
accomplishments, it has neither strength nor 
beauty in heaven's sight until it has devoted 
itself to service of love. It must die to live. 

All this is but following in the footsteps of 
our Master. He had all strength, and was alto- 
gether lovely. Yet, according to the world's 
standards, his visage was marred and his life was 
a failure. We may not copy earth's patterns; 
it is better that we seek to be like him who was 



12 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

meek and lowly, but who yet was the strong Son 
of God. 

" I were so glad to be just what himself has been, 

With ne'er a home nor housel; 
A beggar, save of rains and starry sky and suns 

Like any other ousel; 
So proud to walk that very way 
Himself walked first, long nights and day, 
My up-lift heart were fain to pray, 

Lord, make me humble ! 

" But been I King instead, just like himself is now, 
With thrones and crown and stayment; 

With men a-hearkened to my very breath 
For keep and roof and raiment; 

So proud to wear a world's poor love 

Himself wore first, here and above, 

My up-lift heart cry as a dove, 
Lord, make me humble I " 



CHAPTER II. 

THE CHRISTIAN AND HIS BIGHTS. 

Life is too short for any bitter feeling ; 

Time is the best avenger if we wait. 
The years speed on, and on their wings bear healing ; 

We have no room for anything like hate. 

This solemn truth the low mounds seem revealing, 

That thick and fast about our feet are stealing — 

Life is too short. 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 

SOME people have a great deal of trouble in 
looking after their rights. They are continu- 
ally on the alert, guarding them against unwar- 
ranted encroachments. It is natural and human 
to wish to have one's rights respected. In one 
sense we cannot blame the man who insists that 
he shall always have his place according to his 
rank, and that others shall accord to him the 
respect and honor which are his due. Yet we 
all admit that such a spirit is not a winning or 
beautiful one. We do not in our heart admire 
the person who is always clamoring for his 

13 



14 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

rights, and who is offended by every word or 
act which seems to ignore his dignity. 

At least, there is a " more excellent way " — 
the way of Christian love. " The grandest 
thing in having rights, ,, said George MacDon- 
ald, " is that, being your rights, you can give 
them up." That is the Christian way. " Love 
seeketh not its own." It is ready always to 
yield even that which it might justly claim. 

The law of love abates nothing of the duty 
which we owe to each other. It requires us to 
show to every one all proper honor and regard. 
We are exhorted to render to all their dues. 
A noble spirit is always exceedingly careful to 
respect all personal rights, even in the lowliest. 
We may not interpret the law of Christian love, 
therefore, as giving us liberty to withhold from 
any other attention, service, or courtesy which 
it is our duty to render. It is not on this side 
that the lesson of charity touches. We should 
hold ourselves responsible for the payment in 
full, to the very last farthing, of all our debt of 
love or honor to others. 

But in the exaction of our own rights we are 



THE CHRISTIAN AND HIS RIGHTS. 1 5 

to be lenient to the last degree. The teaching 
of our Master on this subject is very clear and 
emphatic. " Blessed are the meek," he said. 
The meek are those who do not contend for 
their own rights, but submit to be ignored or 
wronged, taking it quietly, patiently, and sweetly 
when men fail to do them justice, not fuming 
and fretting under a sense of wrong. 

Meekness is not weakness. There are those 
who do not assert their rights nor try to enforce 
them, only because they have no power to con- 
tend with the tyrannical oppression which 
crushes them. There may be no meekness in 
their quiet submission; perhaps they submit 
only because they cannot successfully resist. 
On the other hand, the Master tells us that he 
himself is meek and lowly in heart. We know, 
too, that through all his life he never resisted 
wrong. He complained not even when he was 
suffering most unjustly and most cruelly. He 
never demanded his rights, but cheerfully sur- 
rendered them. Yet we know that it was not 
in the powerlessness of weakness that he thus 
suffered. He had all power and could have 



1 6 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

crushed his enemies, escaping from their hand. 
Or he could have summoned legions of angels 
to his help any moment and have been liberated. 
But he gave up his rights rather than lift a 
finger to enforce them. 

Like those flowers which give out their sweet- 
est perfume only when they are crushed, the 
precious life of Jesus gave out its most holy 
sweetness when it was suffering most unjustly. 
His answer to the terrible wrong of crucifixion 
was a prayer for those who were driving the 
nails. His response to the cross was redemp- 
tion through the blood that flowed. 

This same spirit the Master's followers are 
bidden to cherish, turning the other cheek when 
smitten on one, going two miles when com- 
pelled to go one, praying for those who despite- 
fully use them and persecute them, — all of 
which means that they are to give up their 
rights rather than contend for them, to be silent 
and sweet when they have a just human right 
to cry out against injustice or wrong. 

It is not easy to quietly allow others to do 
injustice to us in advancing their own interests. 



THE CHRISTIAN AND HIS RIGHTS. \J 

Yet God knows what is ours in the work of the 
world, even though another has put his trade- 
mark on it. A delightful story is told of the 
boyhood of Agassiz. The family lived on the 
edge of a lake in Switzerland. One winter day 
the father was on the other side of the lake and 
the future scientist and his younger brother 
wished to cross over to him. The lake was 
frozen over. The mother watched the boys 
from her window as they set out. They got 
along well enough till they came to a crack in 
the ice, when they stopped, as if unable to 
advance. Then the mother became very 
anxious. " Louis will get over safely," she said 
to herself, " but the little fellow will fall in and 
be drowned." But the boys were too far away 
for the mother to do anything but fear. Pres- 
ently, however, as she looked, she saw the older 
boy lie down on the ice, his head on one side of 
the crack and his feet on the other, making a 
bridge with his body, and the little fellow crept 
over him to the other side. 

We say that was a beautiful thing for the 
older brother to do. It is always a beautiful 



1 8 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

thing to do — to be a bridge on which another 
may cross over to something better. Stories 
are told of battles in which chasms have been 
filled up with bodies of the dead over which 
finally other brave men have passed to victory. 
That was what Jesus Christ did with his life — 
he made himself of no reputation that through 
his self-humiliation uncounted multitudes might 
cross the gulf, otherwise forever impassable, 
into the heavenly kingdom. This is the story, 
too, of all civil and religious liberty and of all 
advances of truth and Christian civilization. 
Men give their lives to holy service and to sa- 
cred causes and seem to fail and sink down 
into obscurity; but they have only made their 
work and their lives bridges over which others, 
coming after them, move to success and honor. 
Every day we have opportunities to make of 
our own life a bridge on which another may 
pass over to something that he could not 
of himself have attained. By forgetting self 
we can prefer in honor our brother and pro- 
mote his advancement. Sometimes, too, men 
insist on using our life or our work as a foot- 



THE CHRISTIAN AND HIS RIGHTS. 1 9 

path to some goal or ambition of their own. 
Naturally we resent such injustice. But after 
all, need we vex ourselves overmuch about 
such treatment? If only we keep sweet, not 
allowing the wrong or the injustice to embitter 
us, cherishing ever the spirit of cheerful, pa- 
tient love, we are the gainers. The man who 
does the mean or oppressive thing is the man 
who loses. He gathers a curse in his hands 
with the seeming gain he selfishly snatches. 
We need only to watch that no bitterness enter 
our heart, enduring the wrong as our Master 
endured, patiently, committing ourselves to him 
that judgeth righteously. 

No doubt the world, even in these closing 
days of this nineteenth Christian century, calls 
this manner of life unmanly. Yet it is marvel- 
lous how the spirit of meekness has grown and 
diffused itself, how it has gone on permeating 
the lives of men and of nations. More and 
more are men recognizing the truth of Christ's 
teachings that love always wins even though it 
seem to perish, like the dew which loses itself 
in giving its blessing. 



20 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

It is a wonderful promise that is given to the 
meek — " They shall inherit the earth." To 
the natural thought this seems just the reverse 
of the truth. Meekness is giving up the earth, 
not claiming even that portion of it which one 
has a just right to claim. How, then, can one 
inherit the thing one voluntarily surrenders? 
Yet a little thought shows us how, in the very 
yielding of one's rights, one becomes the pos- 
sessor of a far better portion than he relin- 
quishes. The bird that unresistingly accepts 
the injustice of its captivity and sings in its 
cage becomes the inheritor of all things in a far 
truer sense than the bird which tries to claim 
its rights, and flies frantically against the walls 
of its prison in unavailing efforts to be free. 

Then we know well that it is not he who de- 
mands recognition among men that really re- 
ceives it. He may get the husk of it, — the 
place in the procession, the seat at the table, 
the order in the official list, — but it is only 
empty glory which he wins. Self-assertion 
never plucks real honor. It gets no place in 
the respect or affection of men. The man only 



THE CHRISTIAN' AND HIS RIGHTS. 21 

loses in the esteem of his fellows when he gets 
a place by demanding it. One never gains 
influence by scheming for it and by doing things 
for the purpose of becoming influential. There 
are men who spend money freely with the 
object of making themselves popular, but they 
utterly fail. People take their money or their 
gifts, eat their lavish suppers, and then despise 
those who pay such a price to buy that which 
never can be bought. 

But let a man forget himself, pay no heed to 
his rights, give them up rather than contend for 
them ; and let him live a life of disinterested 
goodness, with no self-seeking, no purpose of 
glorifying his own name, and he will inherit a 
recognition and an influence which will shine 
like a halo about his head. " The really un- 
worldly man wakes up with surprise, almost 
with amusement, to find the world about him 
at his feet." He had never wrought for this. 
He loved his fellow-men and was ready at every 
call of need to do any of them a kindly service, 
without regard to its cost. He never spared 
himself — he was lavish of his life. He never 



22 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

thought of fame or recognition, and was surprised 
to find men wreathing chaplets for his brow. 

That is, the way to get one's rights is not to 
care for them, but to give them up ; the way to 
win honor among men is not to demand honor 
nor even to think of it ; the way to achieve in- 
fluence is never to plan or strive to have influ- 
ence, but to think only of fulfilling love's whole 
duty, regardless of cost, giving out the best of 
one's life in self-forgetful service, in Christ's 
name, for others. 

All life confirms the truth of our Lord's word : 
"Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; 
and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." 
God loves to give us power when we do not 
desire or seek it for ourselves ; but what we 
strive after for our own glory he does not wish 
us to have. There is always a crown for humil- 
ity, but there is none for pride or self-conceit. 

A beautiful story is told of two great generals 
in the American Civil War. During General 
Sherman's last campaign in the South, certain 
changes in commanders were made. General 
Howard was placed at the head of a special 



THE CHRISTIAN AND HIS RIGHTS. 23 

division. Soon after this the war closed and 
there was to be a grand review of the army at 
Washington. The night before the review, 
Sherman sent for Howard and said : " The 
political friends of the officer you succeeded 
are determined that he shall ride at the head 
of the corps, and I want you to help me 
out." 

11 It is my command," said Howard, " and I 
am entitled to ride at its head." 

" Of course you are," replied Sherman. 
"You led the men through Georgia and the 
Carolinas; but, Howard, you are a Christian, 
and can stand the disappointment." 

" If you put it on that ground," said Howard, 
11 there is but one answer. Let him ride at the 
head of the corps." 

11 Yes, let him have the honor," said Sher- 
man, "but you will report to me at nine 
o'clock, and will ride by my side at the head 
of the army." 

Howard protested, but his commander's or- 
ders were positive. So, that day, in the grand 
review, the man who had yielded his rights had 



24 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

a place of higher honor at the head of the 
whole army. It is ever thus — the meek in- 
herit the earth ; those who forget themselves 
and serve without striving for place, in the end 
receive the truest honor before both God and 
man. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE VOICE OP STRANGERS. 

" Feeling the way — and all the way up hill ; 
But on the open summit, calm and still, 
The feet of Christ are planted ; and they stand 
In view of all the quiet land. 

" Feeling the way, — and if the way is cold, 
What matter ? — since upon the fields of gold 
His breath is melting; and the warm winds sing 
While rocking summer days for him." 

It is said of sheep that they follow their own 
shepherd because they know his voice. It is 
also said that they will not follow a stranger, 
because they know not the voice of strangers. 
This ought to be as true of the flock of Christ 
as of sheep. They should be able to discern 
between the voice of the Master and the voice 
of any stranger. They should never respond to 
any call but their own Shepherd's. 

Evermore other voices are calling. The 
solicitations are not always nor usually to gross 

25 



26 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

sins. With many people such temptations would 
have no power. The voices of the stranger are 
seductive. They are imitative of the voice of 
Christ himself. Instead of inviting the Christian 
to gross immoralities, to flagrant and outspoken 
opposition to Christ, or to any form of manifest 
disloyalty to him, they solicit his interest in 
something that seems altogether right. It is an 
attractive voice and winning that the Christian 
hears. Surely it is the Shepherd's ! Yet if the 
heart be altogether true to Christ, it knows that 
it is not the Master's voice. The knowledge is 
instinctive — perhaps no reason can be given 
for the feeling, and yet the conviction is indubi- 
table: " That is not my Shepherd's voice." 

It may not be easy to give such marks of the 
Shepherd's voice as to enable the Christian to 
know infallibly whether the solicitations that 
come to him are indeed from Christ. But there 
are certain characteristics which always distin- 
guish his calls. There is a story that once there 
came to the cell of a saintly monk one who 
knocked and asked for admittance. His mien 
was lordly and majestic. "Who art thou?" 



THE VOICE OF STRANGERS. 2J 

asked the saint. " I am Jesus," was the answer. 
There was something in the voice and manner 
of the visitor, however, which made the monk 
suspect that he was not the Holy One he claimed 
to be. " Where is the print of the nails? " he 
asked. Instantly the stranger turned and fled 
away. It was Satan — not Christ. Nothing is 
Christ or of Christ which does not bear this 
mark. 

Said another saint : " There are many hands 
offered to help you ; how shall you know the 
right one? Because in the centre of the palm 
there is the scar of a wound received long since, 
but now glorious with light, according to the 
saying, ' He had rays coming out of his hand.' " 
Every one who comes, however gracious his 
coming may be, however friendly and winning 
his voice, however like Christ he may appear, 
must be subjected to this test: If there is no 
print of the nail in the hand offered to you it is 
not a hand you should receive — it is a stranger 
who is claiming the Shepherd's place. 

A religion without the cross is not Christ's 
religion. He did not come merely to blaze the 



28 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

way for us through the tangled forest, to mark 
out the path for our feet, or to give us an ex- 
ample of true living. Nor did he come merely 
to be a teacher, to reveal to the world the char- 
acter and the will of God. He came to be a 
Saviour. Woven into the very fibre of the 
gospel, dyed into the texture of its threads, is 
the thought of sacrifice, of expiation. Leave 
out the passion, and what remains of the 
gospel? 

There is no satisfactory solution of the mys- 
tery of the life of Christ but that which recog- 
nizes him as the Lamb of God that taketh 
away the sin of the world. He took our nature 
that he might do his redemption work, cleanse 
our lives, purge away the guilt and foulness of 
our sins, and restore us to our lost place. 

" He came in winter's frost and snow 

That thou shouldst warmed be ! 
That heavenly light should thee enfold 

In midnight shades came he ! 
Come, meet him here, with love sincere, 

For much hath he loved thee." 



THE VOICE OF STRANGERS. 29 

Everywhere we see the print of the nails. He 
bore the marks of his wounds after he arose and 
showed them to the disciples to prove that he 
was indeed the Christ. When in the Apoc- 
alypse the veil is withdrawn from the heavenly 
glory, we have a glimpse of him in the midst 
of the brightness, — a Lamb as it had been slain. 
A gospel without the print of the nails is not the 
gospel of Christ, and the voice that proclaims 
such a gospel is the voice of a stranger. 

The same is true of the life to which we are 
called as Christians — if there be no cross in it, 
it lacks the essential marks of genuineness. One 
of the most remarkable incidents in the gospel 
narrative is the story of one of Peter's mistakes, 
when he so violently protested against his Mas- 
ter's going to a cross. " This shall never be 
unto thee," said the loving apostle. But the 
answer showed that Peter was acting the part of 
Satan in seeking to withhold his Master from the 
way of the cross. This was God's appointed 
way for his Son, and the voice which was even 
tremulous with love was yet the voice of a 
stranger. 



30 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

Jesus then added that not for him alone, but 
for his followers as well, was the way of the 
cross the only true way of life. " For whoso- 
ever will save his life shall lose it: and who- 
soever will lose his life for my sake shall find 
it." To try to keep one's friends back from 
sacrifice in the service of Christ is to be Satan 
to them, tempting them to take the easy way. 
The voice that invites to such self-indulgence is 
the voice of a stranger. To seek for one's self 
a life without self-denial, without costly minis- 
try, is to turn away from that which is really 
the vital thing in all Christian life. 

We, too, must have the print of the nails in 
our hands and feet if we truly belong to Christ. 
This is the family mark, without which none are 
indeed Christ's own. It is not to be understood 
that literally in our hands and feet the very scars 
of nails must be seen. We do not need to be 
actually crucified, as Jesus was. There would 
be no virtue in such crucifixion for its own sake. 
It is claimed of Francis of Assisi that the 
stigmata of Christ really appeared in his flesh. 
But, even if this was true, these sacred marks 



THE VOICE OF STRANGERS. 31 

were but the physical impression of an inward 
conformity to Christ which led the saint into 
the very experiences of Christ himself. It is in 
the life, not on the body, that the print of the 
nails must appear. 

There is, in the midst of earthly ease, con- 
tinual danger that we give way to the spirit of 
self-indulgence. Too many of our friends are 
ready to make Peter's mistake when we stand 
before duties which demand self denial or sacri- 
fice, saying to us, " This shall never be unto 
you ! M They insist that we are not really 
called to such costly service, and they would 
dissuade us from it. But such voices are not the 
Good Shepherd's — they are for the time the 
voices of strangers. We should know them by 
their earthly tone. That is not the way Christ 
speaks to us. He would never have us withhold 
ourselves from any service because of its cost. 

Indeed, we may set it down as a principle 
that the print of the nails is on everything wc 
are called to do for Christ. This does not 
mean that everything pleasant and agreeable is 
of the Evil One ; nor that discomfort and suffer- 



32 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

ing are always marks of Christ-likeness. In 
ministries which are full of gladness there may 
be the spirit of Christ — humility and unselfish- 
ness. In services which are hard there may not 
be even a trace of Christ-likeness. The essen- 
tial thing in the cross is love serving without 
question, without stint. " The nails of the true 
cross, to-day/' says one, " are precisely those 
acts and decisions of ours which transfix our 
common selfishness. Whenever we deny our- 
selves willingly for the love of others who do 
not love us, whenever we spend pains and 
patience to understand those who have no sym- 
pathy with us, whenever we give up ease, profit, 
or reputation for the unthankful and the evil, 
we are beginning to receive these sacred marks 
of the Crucified/' 

" He took full measure of the grief 

Of every separate saint, 
As one by one, each on his cross, 

Must tremble and grow faint. 
He knew, though he had given them rest, 

They first must find sore strife; 
Must seek, e'en through the gates of death, 

His promised gift of life." 



THE VOICE OF STRANGERS. 33 

A Christian woman tells of her experience in 
making a fuller consecration to Christ. u Did 
you ever have a person in your home," she 
asks, " who acted as a perpetual rasp on the 
feelings of your household? I had. One day 
when I had nearly lost my faith and was sink- 
ing in the black waters of despair, I called on 
Christ to help me or I would perish. And 
what do you think he asked me to do? To 
love this woman. This was the only ladder 
he ottered me up out of the black depths. 
Then I grew uglier than ever, and almost hated 
my Saviour. The struggle continued until I 
could stand it no longer. In agony I rushed 
to my closet and besought Jesus to help me. 
It seemed then as though in a most tender, 
loving voice, he asked, ' Can't you love her for 
my sake ? ' I said, ' Yes, Lord, I will.' At once 
peace filled my heart. My feelings toward her 
changed entirely. I had yielded my will to 
Christ." She had heard the Master's voice, and 
was following him. That to which he had called 
her was not easy, — it had on it the print of the 
nails, — but it was the way to blessing and joy. 



34 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

The sum of all this teaching is that the Chris- 
tian life is one of love like Christ's, poured out 
in service like his, in self-forgetfulness, without 
stint; and whatever voice calls us away from 
such living and serving to self-indulgence, to 
personal ease, to the saving of our own life, is 
the voice of a stranger, not of the Good Shep- 
herd, and we should flee from it as from a luring 
evil. 



CHAPTER IV. 

"SWEET WILL OF GOD." 

I worship thee, sweet Will of God, 

And all thy ways adore ; 
And every day I live, I seem 

To love thee more and more. 

I love to kiss each print where thou 

Hast set thine unseen feet. 
I cannot fear thee, blessed Will, 

Thine empire is so sweet. 

I have no cares, O blessed Will, 

For all my cares are thine ; 
I live in triumph, Lord, for thou 

Hast made thy triumph mine. 

F. W. Faber. 

Not every Christian seems able to enter into 
Faber's adoration of the will of God. Many 
good people think always of this will as some- 
thing painful, something hard and bitter. When 
they say, in the petition of The Lord's Prayer, 
"Thy will be done," they put a shudder into 
the words as if a ploughshare were being 

35 



36 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

driven through their very heart. They have 
learned to think that God's will means always 
a sorrow, the death of a loved one, the loss of 
property, the enduring of some sore trial. The 
words suggest to them always a cross of some 
kind. 

But this is a wrong interpretation of the prayer. 
No doubt there are times when there must be a 
struggle between our will and God's, and when 
it costs much for us to yield. But this is not 
the exclusive nor even the ordinary meaning 
of the petition. Primarily, it is a prayer, not 
for the suffering, but for the active doing of the 
will of God. This is plainly the meaning of the 
petition in the form of words which our Lord 
gave to his disciples. It is a prayer that the 
will of God may become the law of our life, 
that we may learn to do it always. This em- 
braces all obediences, all duties, the whole of 
our common life. It includes all the sweet, 
happy experiences we have in our homes and 
among our friends, all the gladness of love, all 
the pleasures of social intercourse. It is a 
prayer that in all the varied conditions and cir- 



SfVEET WILL OF GOD." 37 

cumstances of life we may do the things that 
will please God. 

There is nothing in this that is painful or 
hard. There is a secret of very sweet joy 
which is found always in the doing of God's 
will. It brings the approval of conscience — 
the bird that sings in the heart when one does 
right. Then it insures to us the commendation 
and the companionship of God. It was Jesus 
himself who said, " The Father hath not left me 
alone ; for I do always those things that please 
him." Great gladness is found in the doing of 
God's will. Instead of meaning something bitter 
and sorrowful, it means the doing of things that 
should be easy and pleasant. 

The standard which is set for us in the prayer, 
as our Lord has given it to us, indicates in a 
very clear and remarkable manner that it is a 
joyous thing to which we are summoned. We 
are taught to pray that the divine will may be 
done on earth as it is done in heaven. How 
is the will of God done in heaven? Surely it 
does not there mean sorrow, loss, pain, sacrifice. 
The inhabitants of heaven are never called to 



38 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

stand beside dying children or beside new-made 
graves, to give up out of their hands the treas- 
ures of love they prize more than life. There 
are no hard experiences to pass through, no 
sore struggles to endure in that happy land. 
There are no Gethsemanes in heaven, where 
amid strong cryings and tears the child of God 
must lie and agonize as he accepts the cup 
which the Father puts into his hand. There 
the will of God is always joyous and the doing 
of it always brings delight. The angels fly 
swiftly on the errands on which they are sent, 
doing with equal alacrity the most stupendous 
thing and the smallest ministries. It is told in 
the Koran that Gabriel was once sent earthward 
to save King Solomon from the sin of pride, and 
at the same time to help a toiling, weary yellow 
ant to get home to her people with her load of 
food. 

So it ever is in heaven — the will of God is 
done always with joy. It consists in happy ac- 
tivities, in joyous services. It is this heavenly 
standard that is set for our earthly living. The 
will of God, as it is done there, is always sweet 



"SWEET WILL OF GOD." 39 

— it is always a joy to do it. Evidently, 
therefore, the thought in our Lord's mind, 
when he gave this prayer to his disciples, was 
not primarily the suffering and enduring of 
the will of God, but the obedience of common 
life. 

True, this is not always easy. Our hearts do 
not incline us naturally to God's will and ways. 
We are prone to wander from the divine com- 
mandments. It is not until we have a new heart 
that we begin to desire to do the will of God. A 
boy was greatly perplexed about the thought 
that heaven was so far away, and he wondered 
how any one in this world could ever get there. 
His wise mother said to him, " Heaven must 
come down to you — heaven must first come into 
your heart." This explains the whole mystery 
of the doing of God's will on earth as it is done 
in heaven. The heavenly life must come down 
first to us, into our heart, else we never can 
enter heaven. When we have heaven in us we 
begin to grow into God's likeness, striving to 
do God's will. Even then, however, it does 
not instantly become easy for us. It takes all 



40 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

of life to train and discipline our will into happy 
and joyous obedience. 

Still and always, however, this is the lesson 
set for us — the doing of God's will on earth as 
it is done in heaven, as we ourselves shall do it in 
heaven when we reach that happy home. If our 
heart is full of love for Christ the doing of the will 
of God will always be sweet, even though it be 
against nature and at the cost of much self- 
denial. It has been said very truly: " The out- 
side world takes all its color, value, and grace 
from the kind of world one carries about in 
one's self. ,, Heaven in us will make the hard- 
est tasks a delight. 

" Yet more and more this truth doth shine 

From failure and from loss; 
The will that runs traverse to thine 

Doth thereby make its cross. 
Thine upright will cuts straight and still 

Through pride and dream of dross. 

14 But if in parallel with thine 

My will doth meekly run, 
All things in heaven and earth are mine, 

My will is crossed by none. 
Thou art in me, and I in thee — 

Thy will and mine are done." 



"SWEET WILL OF GOD." 41 

No doubt even angels have errands and tasks 
given to them which in themselves would be 
hard, but which become easy, a delight, because 
they are accepted as parts of the will of God 
for them. This is the great secret of joy in 
service. Anything that is God's will for us it 
should be gladness for us to do. If we love 
God deeply everything that he wants us to do 
it is a joy for us to do. If we love not God 
then even the commonest, simplest duties which 
his will requires are hard and dreary tasks for 
us. 

While primarily it is the active doing of God's 
will to which we are called, we are sometimes 
led into the way of suffering and sacrifice. It 
was so in Christ's own experience. He did al- 
ways the Father's will, but at last that will laid 
on him the burden of the Cross. Jesus said 
that if we would be his followers we must take 
up our cross and bear it after him. Sometime in 
every life the will of God means a cross. We are 
called to give up earth's dearest treasures, or to 
step aside from pursuits into which all our life's 
ambitions have gone, or to accept suffering and 



42 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

pain as our lot, instead of joy, health, and 
activity. 

How can we make God's will sweet in these 
cases? There is only one answer — we must 
love God so much that we shall always find joy 
in any service which he may require of us. The 
way to take the bitterness out of any hard 
experience is to acquiesce in it, to cease strug- 
gling and resisting, and to bring our will into 
quiet conformity with God's. Whenever we 
fail thus to submit we make a cross for our- 
selves, and earth's brightness turns to gray. 
But when we sink our will in God's, sure of his 
better wisdom and safer guidance, and of his 
perfect love, even the most painful things have 
in them secrets of joy, as the will of God grows 
sweet to us. The story is well told in the 
following lines : 

" I ran at his commands, 

And sang for joy of heart; 
With willing feet and hands 

I wrought my earnest part — 
And this my daily cry : 
' Dear Master, here ami!' 



''SWEET WILL OE GOD." 43 

" Then came this word one day — 

I shrank as from a rod, 
To hear that dear voice say: 

1 Lie still, my child, for God.' 
As out from labor sweet 
He called me to his feet, 

"Called me to count the hours 

Of many a weary night, 
To bear the pain that dowers 

The soul with heavenly might; 
But still my daily cry : 
* Dear Master, here am I ! ' 

11 His will can only bring 
The choicest good to me, 
So ne'er did angel wing 

Its flight more joyously 
Than I, his child, obey, 
And wait from day to day. 

u The humble offering 

Of quiet, folded hands, 
Costly with suffering 

He only understands, 
To God more dear may be 
Than eager energy. 



44 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

" And he is here, my Song, 
That I may learn of him. 
What though the days are long? 
What though the day is dim? 
'T is he who says, * Lie still; ' 
And I adore his will." 



CHAPTER V. 

FINDING ONE'S SOUL. 

*' Like children in a garden fair, 

Who wander through each flowerful maze, 
And drink from sunny founts with glee, 

And look with long and lingering gaze 
Upon the wondrous scene ; — yet fain 

Would be at home for love and rest, — 
So we, in this bright world of ours, 

With strange homesickness are possest ! " 

It is a great hour for us when we become 
conscious of the splendor of our immortality. 
A very beautiful story is told of the way the 
young Princess Victoria bore herself when she 
first became aware that she might some day be 
Queen. One morning, when she was twelve 
years of age, she opened her book of English 
history and found a paper which had been 
placed there for her information by her tutor. 
She read it attentively, and then said to her 
governess : " I never saw that before. I see that 
I am nearer the throne than I thought." After 

45 



46 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

pondering a few moments the princess said : 
" Many children would boast, but they don't 
know the difficulty. There is much responsi- 
bility." The revelation made a deep impres- 
sion on her mind. More than once she said : 
"I will be good." 

Every one of us is born to a life of splendor 
and vast possibility of beauty and power. We 
are born to be children of God, and to live for- 
ever. We have in us a boundless nature that 
makes us greater than all things in this world. 
Yet some people never seem to become aware 
that they are much better than worms. They 
live as if they were only bodies, mere animals, 
made for this present earthly life alone. The 
aim of their existence never extends beyond 
what they shall eat, what they shall drink, and 
wherewithal they shall be clothed. They seem 
unaware of anything in life higher or more 
important than these needs of their physical 
nature. They have no visions of life in any 
loftier sphere. Their pleasures are only pleas- 
ures of the senses. They know nothing of 
intellectual or spiritual enjoyment. 



FINDING ONE'S SOUL, 47 

A picture without any sky in it is defective. 
It has no uplift — it runs along on earthly levels, 
with nothing of heaven to brighten and glorify 
it. So the life with no sky in it, no vision of God 
and of heaven, is unworthy of an immortal being. 
The best is left out of it. It is only earthly, with 
no influence from above, drawing it upward, or 
within, inspiring good and beauty in it. 

Men tell us that we have souls, but the form 
of the statement is incorrect. It indicates that 
the soul is something which we possess, as one 
might possess a piece of property or a fine pict- 
ure, something outside of one's self, not an essen- 
tial part of one's being. Really, however, our 
soul is ourself. It is the central, vital, essential 
thing in us, that which makes us what we are. 
We are not bodies with souls ; rather, we are 
spirits with bodies. The body is not the man 
or the woman that we are. It is but the house 
in which we live. It is not that in us which thinks 
and chooses and wills and loves. It is not that 
which is capable of growing into nobleness and 
beauty, and wearing at length the full image of 
Christ. 



48 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

The body is a splendid creation. The low- 
est and smallest of God's works are wonderful. 
There is a world of beauty in the tiniest flower, 
in the insect that creeps in the dust. The 
human body is the finest and most wonderful of 
all material creations. But there is something 
else in every human life that is finer, nobler, 
more wonderful than the body. In the story of 
the creation we read that " the Lord God formed 
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man 
became a living soul." It was this breath of 
God entering into the body, this living soul which 
God thus breathed into the creature formed of 
the dust, that made Adam a man. Our body 
is but our home. It is only a temporary home, 
too, for we shall leave it by and by, and we 
shall live then just as really without our body 
as we live now with it. 

Yet many people seem never to find their 
soul. They never think of themselves as more 
than a body. It is a great moment when a man 
wakes up to the consciousness of the fact that 
he is a living soul, an immortal being, that his 



FINDING ONE'S SOUL. 49 

true home is not amid the things of the earth, 
but with God, in the heavenlies. 

There is a beautiful legend or fancy of a com- 
pany of beings from the celestial world who in 
disguise visited a great city one night on some 
errand of mercy. When their work was finished 
they hastily departed, but in some way one of 
their number, a fair young spirit, was left behind, 
lost in the strange town. When people began 
to move in the streets in the morning they found 
a sweet boy, with sunny hair, sitting on the steps 
of the temple. They spoke to him, but he could 
not understand nor answer them. He replied 
to their inquiries only with streaming tears and 
looks of alarm. Presently, however, a slave 
bearing a harp came among the crowd. The 
child saw the harp and eagerly reached out his 
hands to take it. Flinging his arms about it, he 
embraced it affectionately. Then he began to 
touch the strings, and wonderful music, pure, 
clear, melodious, like liquid pearls, fell upon the 
morning air. This was the language which the 
celestial stranger knew. In finding the harp he 
had found a way to express his feelings in lan- 
guage. 



50 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

So it is when one finds one's soul. We are 
like lost children in this world, if we do not 
know our own truer and higher nature. If we live 
only on earthly lines we are beings of celestial 
birth strayed from our real home and environ- 
ment. Everything about us is strange. We do 
not belong here ; heaven is our home. We do 
not know the language of those who throng 
round us. When we find ourselves we begin to 
be at home. 

It is so when a man begins to discover his 
mental powers. He wakes up to the conscious- 
ness that he has a mind. He can think. Beau- 
tiful visions begin to form themselves in his 
brain. He discovers that he has a marvellous 
gift of imagination. Or he has the logical faculty. 
Heretofore he has been plodding on at school, 
poring over books, wearying himself with task- 
work which has never ceased to be dull and dis- 
tasteful, finding no delight in his studies, without 
interest or enthusiasm in his work. Then one 
day something wonderful happens. It is as if 
he were suddenly waked from sleep to look 
about upon a new world. Everything is changed. 



FINDING ONE'S SOUL. 5 1 

His books begin to interest him, and as he reads 
on a strange light shines upon the pages. His 
studies are no more dreary tasks, but delightful 
exercises. It is as when the angel, lost and 
dumb until now, sees the harp, and grasping it, 
begins to make enrapturing music on its strings. 
He has found his soul. 

It is so with the artist, when after years of 
struggling and failure he at length discovers his 
powers, and begins to put on the canvas or cut 
in the marble the lovely dreams he had sought 
long in vain to interpret. It is so with the musi- 
cian, who, after carrying in his soul through 
many days and nights a burden of melody, strug- 
gling unavailingly to utter itself, at last discovers 
a mode of expression and begins to pour forth 
notes of song. Dumb until his eyes fell on the 
wondrous harp, his soul awoke that moment, 
and his fingers began to evoke harmonies which 
thrilled and charmed every ear that heard them. 

The same is true in spiritual spheres. Men 
live for years an altogether worldly life. They go 
with their work, pursuing their earthly callings on 
and ambitions, in business, in study, in pleasure, 



52 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

yet unconscious all the while of the splendid 
spiritual world that lies above them and all about 
them. They never see God nor hear his voice. 
They are unaware of the vast realm of invisible 
things which is theirs by inheritance. They 
have no eyes for the glories of the heavenly 
kingdom. The only world they know of is the 
material world. 

Then one day there is an awakening, and they 
become aware of a life far above them, with rich 
possibilities of joy and blessing. It is significant 
that the prodigal is said to have " come to him- 
self" when in his degradation he had a vision 
of his true home and his father's house, with all 
the possibilities of good and of blessing that 
were there for him. Until that moment he had 
been a child of God lost in the world of sin. 
Now he had found his soul. His fingers touched 
the chords of the heavenly harp and holy music 
was evoked. 

This is the real story of all Christian life. 
Faith in Christ is finding one's rightful place as 
a child of God. Only in Christ can we find our 
true self. He alone can restore our soul. Peace 



FINDING ONE'S SOUL. 53 

is the music of a life at rest in God. The whole 
being is full of harmony. All discord vanishes 
as the lessons are learned, as the image of God 
is imprinted on the soul, and as the Spirit of 
God possesses more and more fully his own 
place in the heart. 

It is often in the hard and painful experiences 
of life that men find their soul. We dread pain ; 
but in days and nights of keen suffering many 
people develop strength and beauty of character 
which had never before been revealed in them, 
as the photographer's picture is developed on 
his sensitized plate in the darkness. We shrink 
from sorrow; but in sorrow's dark hours many 
a life for the first time finds itself, as the gold 
discovers its richness in the fire. We hold our- 
selves back from costly self-denial and sacrifice ; 
but the Master says it is only in the losing of our 
life in love's devotion that we really find it. 
Whenever we are divinely led in any way of 
struggle, cost, danger, or darkness, we may re- 
joice, for God is taking us on a path of self- 
discovery ; and in the cost or trial, if we faint 
not, we shall find our soul. 



54 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

We need not wait till we get to heaven to find 
ourselves at home with God. Heaven may- 
begin here any common day — it does begin 
whenever we enter truly into fellowship with 
God, when our will is lost in his, when the life 
of Christ becomes indeed our life. George 
MacDonald puts it well in one of his sermons : 

" Never, in the midst of the good things of 
this lovely world, have I felt at home in it. 
Never has it shown me things lovely or grand 
enough to satisfy me. It is not all I should like 
for a place to live in. It may be that my 
unsatisfaction comes from not having eyes open 
enough, or keen enough, to see and understand 
what God has given ; but it matters little whether 
the cause lie in the world or in myself, both being 
incomplete ; God is, and all is well. All that is 
needed to set the world right enough for me — 
and no empyrean heaven could be right for me 
without it — is that I care for God as he cares 
for me ; that my will and desires keep time and 
harmony with his music ; that I have no thought 
that springs from myself apart from him ; that 
my individuality have the freedom that belongs 



FINDING ONE'S SOUL. 55 

to it as born of his individuality, and be in no 
slavery to my body or my ancestry, or my prej- 
udices, or any impulse whatever from region 
unknown; that I be free by obedience to the 
law of my being, the live and live-making will 
by which life is life, and my life is myself." 



CHAPTER VI. 

NOT FOR SELF BUT CHRIST. 

Lord, we would fain some little palm-branch lay 

Upon thy way. 
If but the foldings of thy garment's hem 

Shall shadow them, 
These worthless leaves which we have brought and strewed 

Along thy road, 
Shall be raised up and made divinely sweet, 

And fit to lie beneath thy feet. 

Susan Coolidge. 

One of the best tests of Christian work is in 
the way Christ is honored in it. When people 
think and say little about themselves and much 
about the Master the lesson of faith has been 
well learned. There is always a temptation to 
try to draw attention to ourselves, even when 
doing good, when engaged most seriously in 
Christ's service. We like to have our work 
commended. It is pleasant for us to receive full 
recognition and credit for what we do. It is 
natural for us to desire to have our own name 

56 



NOT FOR SELF BUT CHRIST. 57 

written plainly on any piece of work we make, 
even though it be something manifestly for 
Christ. It hurts us to be overlooked, not to get 
the honor which we think is due to us, not to 
have our service or our faithfulness commended. 
The danger is, therefore, that we seek our 
own honor instead of Christ's when we are en- 
gaged in his service. The minister is tempted, 
at least, to think of his own reputation as well 
as of the glory of Christ in the building-up of 
the church over which he is placed. He has 
his name to make among ministers. He does 
not like to fall below neighboring pastors in the 
measure of success he achieves. The teacher 
naturally wishes to win the love of his scholars 
for himself, while he is winning a place in their 
hearts for Christ. It is easier, too, to get people 
to love us and honor us than it is to get them to 
do homage to Christ. Yet, if this is all we do 
we have doubly failed. We have failed to put 
honor upon Christ ; then we have failed also 
to give to others anything on which they may 
really rest in the hour of need. No matter how 
truly they may love us, how confidently they 



58 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

may trust us, how highly they may honor us, 
we can do but little for them, in life's real 
stress. We may bring them the help of our 
sympathy, the word of cheer, the word of com- 
fort, but we cannot be to them the rock they 
need to stand upon, the everlasting arm whose 
enfolding alone can keep them. If all we do for 
them is to get them to love us and believe in us 
we have done nothing for them that will avail 
in time of real need. Our work will not stand 
the test of the day of final revealing. They 
build only on sand who get nothing better into 
their life as foundation than love for a minister, 
a teacher, a friend, or for any Christian. " Other 
foundation can no man lay than that which is 
laid, which is Jesus Christ." We do men real 
good only when we get them to put their trust 
in Christ, to rest altogether on him. To get 
ourselves built into the foundation is only to put 
in wood, hay, and stubble. 

We have our place as mediators of the divine 
help. We are little cups in which Christ puts 
something of his love, that we may carry it to 
those who are hungry and thirsty. We are 



NOT FOR SELF BUT CHRIST. 59 

vessels to bear his name to others. We arc 
voices to cry in the wilderness the message of 
grace. But we need to make sure always that 
we get people to know and love Christ and 
not merely to know and love us. 

When we turn to the Scriptures we see that 
it is the characteristic of all true piety to honor 
Christ and not to think of personal honor. John 
the Baptist was an ideal preacher, and one of 
the finest things in his life was his self-oblitera- 
tion. The people were ready to accept him as 
the Messiah, but he quickly repelled the sugges- 
tion, saying, " I am not the Christ. I am not 
that Light. I am only a witness to testify of 
that Light. I am only a voice crying in the 
wilderness, telling men of the Christ to come, 
the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to 
unloose. " 

Thus John turned the people's eyes away 
from himself and fixed them upon Christ, while 
he remained unhonored. He said he must de- 
crease while Jesus increased. He said he was 
the bridegroom's friend, and therefore rejoiced 
in the bridegroom's honor, even when his own 



60 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

brightness was eclipsed by it. When Jesus 
came at last to the Jordan and was baptized, 
John at once began to point the people to him, 
saying, " Behold the Lamb of God." He would 
have them leave him now, for his work as 
forerunner was done, and go after the Christ. 
Nothing in all the story of human life is more 
beautiful than John's cheerful dropping out of 
sight and consenting to be overlooked, forgot- 
ten, set aside, in the splendor of the Master's 
increasing glory. 

We have a still higher example. The Holy 
Spirit, in his work in the world, we are told, does 
not call attention to himself, but turns every 
eye to Christ. " He shall glorify me : for he 
shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto 
you." He pours forth the light of his own 
divine shining, but as men look, they think not 
of the streaming light, but of the blessed face 
of the Saviour which appears in all its beauty, 
revealed in the midst of the brightness. The 
Spirit works silently, caring not to be noticed 
or honored himself, desiring only to get men to 
see Christ, and to look at him in the glory of 



NOT FOR SELF BUT CHRIST. 6 1 

his person and the greatness of his redeeming 
love. 

Then the lesson is taught directly. " Let 
your light so shine before men," said Jesus, 
" that they may see your good works, and 
glorify your Father which is in heaven." Our 
good works are to be seen, but they should 
make men think of God, not of us. Too many 
people like to have the honor of their good 
works gather about their own head, but Jesus 
says we should do everything for the glory of 
God. This teaching leaves no room among 
pure motives for self. We should be willing to 
be nothing if only Jesus Christ be exalted. 

11 Give me the lowest place ; not that I dare 
Ask for that lowest place, but thou hast died 
That I might live and share 
Thy glory by thy side." 

How can we train ourselves to self- forgetful 
living and serving? We must watch our own 
heart and see that Christ is truly exalted and 
honored there. If he is on the throne and his 
kingdom is really set up in us we shall think 
only of pleasing him in all that we do. We shall 



62 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

seek always the glory of his name and the ex- 
tending of his sway. 

Another suggestion is that we should train 
ourselves to work quietly, never for notice, never 
to advertise our deeds or to get them mentioned 
or praised. It is perilous to form the habit of 
talking about ourselves and what we have done. 
Some Christian men and women allow them- 
selves to drift into an easy way of self-reporting 
which soon becomes self-glorification. Even in 
the minds of those to whom they talk thus they 
defeat their own purpose, for talking of one's 
own fine doings detracts greatly from the fine- 
ness of the doings in the thought of those who 
thus hear of them. 

The truest work for Christ is wrought in self- 
forgetfulness, without consciousness of the im- 
portant part one has taken. Moses wist not 
that his face shone. The Christliest piety is 
never aware of its own divineness. The work 
that is done for Christ without a thought of self 
is the heavenliest work. Humility, though it 
hides its beauty and veils its shining, is the 
brightest of all graces. No other quality of 



NOT FOR SELF BUT CHRIST, 63 

heart means so much to a Christian, either in 
beauty of character or in the peace of the heart. 

" The eagle nestles near the sun; 
The dove's low nest for me ! 
The eagle's on the crag; sweet one, 
The dove's in our green tree. 

11 For hearts that beat like thine and mine, 
Heaven blesses humble earth; 
The angels of our heaven shall shine 
The angels of our hearth." 

There is a legend of a good man whom the 
angels wished to have honored because of the 
heavenliness of his life. They asked God to 
give him some new power, and were sent to 
learn from the man himself what he would 
choose. He said he wished nothing more than 
he had ; but when importuned to name some 
new gift which should be bestowed upon him 
he answered that he would like to have greater 
power of doing good without knowing it. So 
it was ordained that his shadow, when it fell 
behind him, should have healing influence; but 
when it fell before his face should produce no 



64 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

such effect. It is better that we should not even 
be aware of the good we are doing. What we 
do is then unmixed with self, the only name 
that is honored being Christ's. 

We mistake when we fancy that we are in 
this world to make a name for ourselves. We 
need not give ourselves the slightest concern 
upon this subject. Indeed, any thought of name 
or fame for ourselves always detracts from the 
purity of our motive and spirit as disciples of 
Christ. We have only one errand here — to 
do God's will, to fulfil the divine thought or 
purpose for our life, and to glorify Christ. We 
have nothing whatever to do with the honoring 
of ourselves before men, with looking after our 
reputation. If we honor Christ he will honor 
us. If we exalt his name in our life he will ex- 
alt our name before the angels and his Father. 

" Of the thousand hours me meeting, 
And with gladsome promise greeting, 
One alone hath kept its faith, 
One wherein — ah, sorely grieved ! — 
In my heart I first perceived 
Who for us did die the death. 



NOT FOR SELF BUT CHRIST 65 

u All to dust my world was beaten; 
As a worm had through them eaten 
Withered in me bud and flower; 
All my life had sought or cherished 
In the grave had sunk and perished; 
Pain sat in my ruined bower. 

11 While I thus, in silence sighing, 
Ever wept, on death still crying, 
Still to sad delusions tied, 
All at once the night was cloven, 
From my grave the stone was hoven, 
And my inner doors thrown wide. 

M Whom I saw, and who the other, 
Ask me not, or friend or brother ! — 
Sight seen once, and evermore ! 
Lone in all life's eves and morrows, 
This hour only, like my sorrows, 
Ever shines my eyes before.' " 



CHAPTER VII. 

BEING A BBANGH. 

" 'T is but little I can do ! 
Let this be my effort still, 
Ever to be kind and true, 
Ever watchful against ill, 
Doing, Lord, thy holy will. 

'* 'T is but little I can say ; 
Let me ever keep in mind 
Something true to speak each day, 
Spurning every word unkind ; 
So thy favor I may find." 

It is a great privilege to be a branch. It is 
to share the best there is in the vine. A branch 
is really part of the vine, not something separate 
and distinct, living merely in its shadow, under 
its influence, receiving gifts and favors from it ; 
it is the vine itself, with all the vine's richness 
and fulness of life. 

When we think of this as an illustration of 
the relation of the believer to Christ we have a 
suggestion of the closeness and intimacy of that 

66 



BEING A BRANCH. 67 

relation. The Christian does not merely receive 
blessings from Christ, does not merely enjoy his 
friendship, have his help, and live under his 
protection. This would be a high privilege, 
even if it were all. To have the Son of God 
for Friend, Helper, Keeper, and Guide brings 
into a sinful, frail, imperilled human life un- 
speakable good. But the believer is a branch 
of Christ, one with him. Christ's life is his life. 
Christ's fulness flows into his heart. Christ's 
joy and peace and strength are his. Apart 
from Christ he can do nothing, but in Christ he 
can do all things. 

There is, however, another side of this illus- 
tration of the branch. The test of true union 
with the vine is fruitfulness. The branch which 
does not bear fruit is cut off and cast away as 
useless. The vine itself bears no fruit — all the 
fruit must grow on the branches. This suggests 
the responsibility of being a branch. If a 
branch is fruitless, with nothing but leaves, it 
makes the vine a failure at the point where it 
grows. The hungry come to it seeking for 
fruit, but find none and are disappointed and 



68 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

Christ is disappointed too. And it is not the 
fault of the vine, whose life is full all the while 
and ready to produce abundant fruit, but the 
fault of the branch, which for some reason does 
not avail itself of the rich resources of life at its 
disposal, that is, does not do its full duty as a 
branch. 

The figure holds true in spiritual life. Christ 
is the vine and we are the branches. Christ 
himself does not bear the fruit with which he 
desires to feed the world's hunger — it must 
grow in the lives of his followers. Once, for a 
time, he was himself in the world as a Branch, 
and as such he was wondrously fruitful. Every 
possibility of his nature was developed. In 
him all the fruits of the Spirit grew to their 
ripest and best. Love reached its perfection in 
his life. He went about doing good. Every- 
where he went he carried blessing. 

We have accounts of a few miracles wrought 
by Christ and condensed records of many 
others; but besides these supernatural acts of 
mercy, his days and hours were crowded with 
deeds of common kindness which far surpassed 



BEING A BRANCH. 69 

in sum of blessing his supernatural works. 
Then all the fruits of disposition and character 
reached their best in his life. Love, joy, peace, 
long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, goodness, 
were found in him in perfectness. While Jesus 
Christ remained on the earth in human form he 
was indeed a fruitful branch and thousands of 
hungry ones were fed with the fruits which 
dropped from his rich life. No one ever came 
to him hungry, desiring to be fed, only to be 
disappointed. 

But when he went away into heaven he 
became the great Vine. All who are attached 
to him by faith and love are now branches of 
him. Through them his life flows, and they 
are to bear fruit in his name. We cannot put 
this truth too clearly nor emphasize it too 
strongly. It is upon our human lives that the 
fruit must grow with which Christ would feed 
the hunger of men. He is not here any more 
in the flesh, but we are here in his place. We 
represent him, and the blessings which he would 
give to the world must be given through us. 
There is no other way in which they can be 



yo STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

given. Angels would gladly come to earth to 
do our work, but they could not do it. We are 
the body of Christ, our hands are his hands, 
our feet are his feet, our lips are his lips. Dur- 
ing his incarnation he lived in one human body ; 
now his body is the whole company of be- 
lievers. 

It ie Chrises will that the ministry of love 
which he began in person shall be continued. 
" The works that I do shall ye do also ; and 
greater works than these shall ye do." The 
world is full of sorrow, which needs comfort; 
of bruised and broken lives, which need healing ; 
of weary and heavy-laden ones, who need hope 
and cheer. If Jesus were here again he would 
himself give out blessings which should meet 
all these wants and cravings. He is here in the 
lives of his followers. And if we who bear 
Christ's name fail to give to men in our meas- 
ure what Christ would give if he were here 
again in person, we fail Christ and disappoint 
him. His heart yearns to give out comfort, 
cheer, love, and strength to all who need it, and 
if we are not fruitful branches ministering to 



BEING A BRANCH. J\ 

earth's hungry ones what he would pass through 
us to them, we grieve him and those go hungry 
still, uncomforted, unhelped, unblessed, who 
might have been made to rejoice if we had 
done our part. 

This responsibility of being a branch has 
its application to every individual Christian. 
Each branch has its own place on the vine, its 
own space to fill. Though all the branches but 
one hang full of fruit, the one that is empty 
makes the vine a failure in the place where it 
hangs. Those who come to this particular 
branch, hungry, expecting to find fruit, are dis- 
appointed. Though a hundred Christian lives 
in a community are full of love, sympathy, and 
helpfulness, and one lacks the power or the 
willingness to bless and serve, that one makes 
the love and grace of Christ in vain to those to 
whom that one was sent to be the bearer of 
these divine gifts. 

If one star among all the stars of the sky 
should fail to shine some night, its light would 
be missed and there would be a blank in the 
sky. If one light-house lamp on all the coasts 



72 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

should not be lighted to-night, who can tell what 
disasters might happen before morning? This 
is an individual matter. The faithfulness of the 
multitude will not excuse the failure of one, the 
least and the lowliest one. When in the great 
orchestra the little piccolo did not do its part 
in the rehearsal the leader stopped everything 
till the lack was supplied. Not only does 
Christ in heaven miss the part of one of his 
who fails to live out his life in the world, but 
the hungry ones miss the food they crave, and 
those in darkness miss the light that is not 
shining, and sorrowing ones miss the comfort 
they should have received. 

We should make this a personal matter. We 
are in danger of supposing that it is Christ's 
work alone to bless the world, to save it, to do 
good to those who are in need of help. We 
talk about the Holy Spirit who was given after 
Christ had made his great sacrifice, and we are 
in danger of concluding that the work of Christ 
in the world is to be done altogether by the 
Spirit. We fall into the habit of praying God 
to send comfort and blessing to those who are 



BEI.XG A BRANCH. J$ 

in need or in sorrow, supposing that he will 
answer our prayers in some direct way. We 
do not realize that God is dependent upon us 
for the things we ask him to do, that with all 
his omnipotence he has so ordered that he 
needs our work and needs it well done so that 
his great work shall be made effective. 

It would be vain and absurd for the branches 
to hang empty through the summer, praying 
the vine, meanwhile, to feed the hungry people 
who will come by and by, looking for fruit. The 
vine is dependent on the branches for the fruit 
which it is eager to bear. It bears no clusters 
itself — they all grow on the branches. No less 
unreasonable is it for the followers of Christ to 
pray their Master to send blessing to the world 
while they themselves, with their empty and 
unfruitful lives, do nothing to make others 
happier or better. 

It is the will of Christ that each individual 
Christian shall be a branch full of fruit. If 
people turn to us in their need, sorrow, and 
despair, hoping to get from us a little help, and 
find nothing, we have not only disappointed 



74 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

them, but we have also disappointed Christ, for 
if we were indeed living branches in full union 
with him we should bear fruit which would 
satisfy the cravings of those who turn to us. 
We should see to it therefore that we are not 
only Christians by profession, but that we are 
really attached to Christ in close union, as 
branches are to the vine. Then Christ himself 
will live in us — we shall be literally and truly 
branches of Christ. Then our lives will abound 
in the fruits of righteousness and of love, and 
all who turn to us for sympathy, for comfort, 
for strength, for guidance, will find what their 
hearts seek. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SHALLOW LIVES. 

The wind that blows can never kill 

The tree God plants ; 
It bloweth east, it bloweth west; 
The tender leaves have little rest. 
But any wind that blows is best. 

The tree God plants 
Strikes deeper roots, grows higher still, 
Spreads wider boughs, for God's good will 
Meets all its wants. 

LlLLIE E. Barr. 

In one of our Lord's parables he depicts dif- 
ferent lives as different kinds of ground, or 
rather ground in different conditions. One kind 
he describes under the figure of thin soil, too 
thin to bring anything to ripeness or perfection. 
The soil may be rich enough in its quality, — 
perhaps the very best in the field, — but there is 
too little of it. It consists of only a thin layer, 
and then under it lies a hard rock. The seeds 
are cast into the soil, which receives them eag- 

75 



7 6 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

erly, and nourishes them into quick life — 
" straightway they sprang up," all the more 
quickly " because they had no deepness of 
earth." For a little time they gave splendid 
promise of growth, but " when the sun was risen 
they were scorched ; and because they had no 
root, they withered away." 

We understand the illustration so far as the 
literal meaning is concerned. There are patches 
of soil like this in many a farmer's field. The 
wheat sown there is the first of all to spring up, 
laughing at the slower coming-up of the seed in 
other parts of the field. But the first hot day it 
withers, and that is the end of it. 

It is our great Teacher himself who paints 
this picture for us, meaning us to get a spiritual 
lesson from it. He tells us plainly, also, what 
kind of people he has in mind — those who hear 
the word, at first receiving it with joy, but in 
whom the word, lacking root, does not abide, 
because it cannot bear the testings of this world, 
and soon droops and perishes. 

That is, there are those who by reason of the 
thinness or shallowness of their life do not fur- 



SHALLOW LIVES. J 7 

nisli soil in which the good things of religious 
principle and character can grow. They are 
not unreceptive, like the life depicted under the 
figure of the trodden road ; they receive quickly 
and impulsively the good teachings and holy 
influences which come to them. But they just 
as quickly let them go. Worthy intentions do 
not grow into fixed purposes. Impulses do not 
become principles. Good feelings do not ripen 
into fruits of noble character. Heavenly visions 
are not wrought into holy deeds. The green 
shoots lie withered and dead on the ground. 

Shallowness of life is too common a fault. It 
is not a large proportion of beginnings of good 
which grows into maturity. There are too 
many people who are always eager to accept 
any new truth that is brought to them, but who 
do nothing with it, make nothing of it, do not 
assimilate it in their life, and therefore soon lose 
it. Many begin to build, and are not able to 
finish. Countless readers read part of the first 
volume of great books, and never get any far- 
ther. In certain popular schools and lecture- 
courses the first enrolment falls off fifty per 



78 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

cent, before the close. If all who begin to learn 
music or art persevered unto the end, how full 
the world would be of music and of beauty ! If 
all fine beginnings of character ripened into 
perfection, how good we all should be ! 

One of the pictures of the crucifixion of Jesus 
shows the scene on Calvary after the body had 
been taken down and laid away in the grave. 
All is quiet and still. The- crowd is gone. No 
one is seen about the place. There are only 
the ghastly memorials of the terrible things 
which had happened during the day. Off to 
one side of the picture is seen an ass, nibbling 
at some withered palms that lay there. Thus 
the artist most graphically teaches the fickleness 
of human applause. Only a few days ago a great 
throng had followed Jesus over Olivet into the 
city in triumphant procession, waving their palm 
branches and strewing them on the road before 
him as they shouted their hosannas. Now Jesus 
is dead, crucified, and here, hard by the cross, 
lie those faded reminders of that glad day's re- 
joicing — nothing more. So fickle was men's 
love for Jesus in those days, and so quickly did 



SHALLOW LIVES. 79 

their hosannas change to shouts of derision ! 
Hut is it different to-day? Do not men's hearts 
grow warm and tender with love for Christ on 
Sunday, in a service of devotion, and then by 
Monday lose all their glad, spiritual enthusiasm? 
The palm branches of praise and consecration, 
the green leaves of good resolves and eager in- 
tentions, lie withered on the ground, amid the 
tokens of unfaithfulness and disloyalty. 

We hear stirring appeals to duty, and our 
hearts respond gladly and ardently. We think 
that we have become altogether Christ's, that 
our life henceforth will be devoted to him with- 
out stint or reserve. But, alas ! the soil is thin. 
The green shoots find no place to root, and 
under the first hot sun they wither. What 
comes of all our good intentions, our fair prom- 
ises, our sacred pledges, our solemn vows? 
Too often nothing but faded leaves. We mean 
to live grandly — in the glow of our devo- 
tions we sincerely intend to be apostolic in our 
zeal and in the beauty of our character and 
work ; but in the end nothing but pitiful failure 
comes of it all. 



80 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

On every church-roll there are the names of 
those who began well, with unusual promise, and 
for a little time maintained the high standard of 
their auspicious beginning, but by and by, in 
the stress and pressure of duty and responsi- 
bility, or in the face of opposition and ridicule, 
they lost interest and soon fell out of the ranks 
altogether. In every city and town there are 
thousands of lapsed church-members. Once 
they were active and enthusiastic in following 
Christ, but they wearied in well-doing and no 
longer even claim to be Christians. 

Nor is it in religion only that this failure 
appears ; we see illustrations of like fickleness 
in all departments of life. We see it in work, 
in business, in friendship, in education. Men 
are so impatient to get into active life, to be 
doing good, to be making money, to be shining 
as lights in the world, that they will not take 
time for adequate and thorough preparation. 
What in other men requires ten years they try 
to crowd into three or four. They will spend 
no time in laying deep foundations, they are in 
such haste to see the superstructure of their 



SHALLOW LIVES. 8l 

dreams rising. They will not give years to 
apprenticeship — life is too short, they say, for 
such slow processes, at least for them ; and 
they are out in the world long before the slow, 
plodding companions of their earlier youth. 
They form friendships almost at sight, and in 
a few days or weeks make intimacies which in 
persons of different mould require months or 
years. The seed springs up immediately. 

But the end is the same in all cases. The 
eager student who had not patience to make 
thorough preparation for his profession finds 
himself at length facing tasks which he cannot 
perform, and is a failure. The man who in 
youth spurned the drudgery required to learn 
a trade or a business, at midlife or earlier dis- 
covers that he can do nothing well, and that 
there is no place for him in the world's crowded 
ways. He is pushed out of the ranks, there- 
fore, not because men are hard or unfraternal, 
but because he cannot hold his place and do 
his work. The friendships that sprang up in a 
day and at once became so ardent prove short 
lived, and leave only emptiness and sorrow 



82 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

behind. Few other causes are productive of 
so many failures in life as thinness, superfici- 
ality. Noble possibilities perish because there 
is no depth of soil in which heavenly plants can 
root themselves. The trouble is not with the 
native endowment — that may be princely ; 
it is with the culture, the training. With depth 
of soil the harvest would have yielded a hun- 
dredfold ; but by reason of its shallowness there 
is no harvest at all. 

We need to give serious thought to the warn- 
ing against shallowness of life. The farmer's 
remedy is picks and bars, and the breaking-up 
and removal of the rock. Then, in the deep- 
ened soil the seeds will grow, taking firm root 
and coming to perfection. We should seek the 
deepening of our spiritual life so that the words 
of God may find entrance, and may grow into a 
harvest of beauty. " It is bad to be hard, but 
it is bad also to be thin." No price we may 
have to pay should be thought too great if the 
result is the development of all the possibilities 
there are in our life. 

We cannot miss sore testings. Every life will 



SHALLOW LIVES. 83 

have its trials. Our Lord in his explanation of 
the parable says that when tribulation or perse- 
cution arises because of the word, the man with 
the shallow life straightway stumbleth. He 
cannot stand in the battle. The plants of right- 
eousness growing in him have no deep root, and 
cannot endure the summer's heat. 

In these modern days when Christianity is so 
widely in favor, and when persecution is rare, 
we may think that such testing will not be expe- 
rienced. But never have there been days which 
more sorely tried believers in Christ than do our 
own very days. Persecution is not the only 
trial which tests faith. It is harder to live nobly 
than to die heroically. It may be easy now to 
profess Christ, but it is not easy to live the true 
Christlike life year after year. Prosperity is 
ofttimes sorer testing than adversity. Many a 
man who could endure the hardness of war as a 
good soldier fails utterly in the days of peace. 
Luxury slays more, both bodies and souls, than 
poverty. Only the plant that has deep root can 
live through heat and drought. 

We must provide for both summer heats and 



84 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

winter storms, if we would be ready to stand all 
the tests of life. We may be tried by sorest as- 
saults of the tempter, or by the most gentle fas- 
cinations of unsuspected evil. We must be 
ready for either. The only preparation that 
will avail is a faith fixed upon Christ, a life 
rooted in him, a purpose which no tempest of 
temptation can shake. The winds and storms 
make the well-rooted tree stand all the more 
firmly. So it is with the Christian life which is 
truly rooted in Christ. It has its temptations, 
its trials, its struggles, but they only strengthen 
it, making it cleave to Christ the more closely 
and firmly, and grow into all the more beautiful 
character. But if our faith is feeble, if our relig- 
ion is one of feeling only instead of principle, 
if we are ruled by the emotions instead of by the 
power of an inner life, then we shall not be able 
to endure the storms, and shall faint and fall 
under their sweep and strain. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CROWDING OUT THE GOOD. 

Be not too busy with thy work and care 
To look to God, to clasp thy hand in his ; 
Miss thou all else, but fail thou not of this ; 

Thou need'st not all alone thy burdens bear ; 
Listen and wait, obey and learn his will, 
His love and service all thy life shall fill. 

Olive E. Dana. 

SOME lives come to nothing because they 
take in too many interests. They are too 
crowded. One thing chokes out another, and, 
of course, it is always the best that is choked 
out. In one of our Lord's parables he illus- 
trates the mistake of this kind of living by a bit 
of soil in which the good seed sown in it failed 
because there was too much else growing in 
the same piece of ground. The soil itself was 
good, as good as the best. The seed was of 
excellent quality, the same that in another part 
of the field yielded a hundredfold. When it 
was first sown it began to grow and gave fine 

85 



86 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

promise. But it soon became apparent that 
the soil was preoccupied. The roots of thorn 
bushes had been left in the ground, and when 
the wheat began to grow the thorns shot up 
too, and they grew so rapidly and so rankly 
that they crowded out the wheat, overshadow- 
ing it, drinking up the nourishment from the 
soil, so that nothing came in the end from the 
good seed which started so hopefully. 

It is interesting to read our Lord's interpreta- 
tion of this part of his parable. The thorns, 
he says, are the cares, riches, and pleasures of 
this world. These things stay in the life where 
the good seed has been planted, and so fill the 
ground that they absorb the life's strength and 
interest, and are so aggressive that they crowd 
out the gentler growths. 

It is easy to understand how this can be. We 
all know how it is in a garden that is not well 
tended. The weeds spring up and choke out 
the flowers and vegetables. Weeding is a very 
important part of a gardener's duty. The ground 
must be kept clean. Our hearts are like gar- 
dens. We plant the seeds, but the weeds were 



CROWDING OUT THE GOOD. 8 J 

in the soil first, and they spring up at once, or 
even before our seeds have had time to send up 
their tender shoots. At once the battle begins. 
If the weeds are let alone they will soon have 
full possession, and all our gardening will be a 
failure. 

Cares are thorns or weeds. Cares are wor- 
ries, anxieties, distractions. They seem to grow 
as naturally in a heart as weeds do in a garden, 
or thorns in a field. Some people think wor- 
ries are quite harmless. They never think of 
them as sins. But Jesus spoke very strongly 
against anxiety. He said we should never 
worry. It does no good. It grieves our Father, 
for it shows distrust of his love and goodness. 
It is following the example of the heathen, who 
do not know of the Father's love for his chil- 
dren. Then here Jesus says worries choke out 
the good which he is seeking to get to grow in us. 

We should guard against worry just as we 
guard against any and every sinful thing. We 
should pick it out whenever it shows its head, 
just as the good gardener watches for weeds 
and takes out every one that comes up. We 



88 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

have an illustration of the danger of worry in 
the story of Martha. There were many good 
things growing in her life, but they were all well- 
nigh choked out by the anxiety that she had 
allowed to grow up in her heart. Many other 
people have the same danger. Life's anxieties 
crowd out the beautiful things which, start in 
their hearts, and which will grow only in a free 
and clean soil. Worry is thus a most harmful 
habit. We should weed it out of our life and 
let God's peace possess us. If we do not it 
will sorely crowd out and choke to death the 
good things growing in us. Then there really 
is no need of anxiety. If we will be true to 
God and trust him he will keep us always in 
perfect peace. 

" Let nothing make thee sad or fretful, 
Or too regretful — 

Be still ! 
What God hath ordered must be right; 
Then find it in thine own delight, 

My will. 

" Why shouldst thou fill to-day with sorrow 
About to-morrow, 
My heart? 



CROWDING OUT THE GOOD. 89 

One watches all with care most true; 
Doubt not that he will give thee, too, 
Thy part. 

"Only be steadfast, never waver, 
Nor seek earth's favor, 

But rest ! 
Thou knowest that God's will must be 
For all his creatures — so for thee — 

The best." 

Riches are thorns, too, which, Jesus says, 
often choke the good seed and crowd it out. 
Money has its uses. If it is rightly possessed it 
may be a means of grace and of great blessing. 
If a man holds his money as God's, which he is 
to use for God, it chokes out nothing of good 
in his life. Indeed, it nourishes the gentle 
graces which grow in the heart. But if money 
becomes a man's master and rules him then it 
crowds out all lovely things. We remember 
that it crowded everything good out of the 
heart of Judas. Out of the life of Demas, too, 
it choked all that was once beautiful and holy. 

We need to watch this ugly thorn lest it get 
a start in our heart and drive out the tender 



90 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

things which the word of God has planted 
there. Money is not to be despised, but it is 
to be feared. Once the prayers of a congrega- 
tion were requested for a man who was growing 
rich. This seemed a strange request. If the 
man had been very poor, in distress, it would 
have been natural to ask the congregation to 
pray for him, but for a man who was growing 
rich — why was he not to be envied ? Was he 
not a favorite of heaven? Yet we remember 
that Jesus spoke very seriously of the peril of 
riches, saying that it is hard for a rich man to 
enter the kingdom of heaven. 

We would better confess frankly that money 
is one of the dangers with which grace always 
has to contend. There are many homes in 
which in humbler days religion flourished, but 
out of which it has been crowded in days of 
more money and greater luxury, so that now, 
while the semblance of godliness may remain, 
there is only a semblance left, with no life. 
There are men who once appeared to be earnest 
Christians, eager, interested, and active, but out 
of whose hearts the love of money has long 



CROWDING OCT THE GOOD. 91 

since choked the love of Christ and the fruits 
of the Spirit. 

Contentment is true riches. That man is 
poor, though possessing millions, who is dis- 
contented. The true millionaire is he who is 
rich in himself, in his character, in his culture, 
in the qualities of his life. These are riches of 
which a man never can be robbed. St. Paul 
was rich because he had learned in whatsoever 
state he was therein to be content. Self-sufficed 
the word means — that is, he had in himself 
that which made him altogether independent 
of outside conditions or circumstances. Emer- 
son says : " I ought not to allow any man, because 
he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my 
presence. I ought to make him feel that I can 
do without his riches, that I cannot be bought, 
— neither by comfort, neither by pride, — and 
although I be utterly penniless and receiving 
bread from him, that he is the poor man beside 
me. 

True growth in life is not measured by accu- 
mulation of wealth, by advance in rank, by 
increase in power ; we are growing only when 



92 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

passing days leave us richer hearted, nobler 
spirited, more Christlike in character. Ruskin 
puts it thus : " He only is advancing in life whose 
heart is growing softer, whose blood warmer, 
whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into 
living peace. " Another writes : 

" The glory of our life 

Comes not from what we do or what we know, 

But dwells for evermore in what we are." 

Jesus said also that the world's pleasures are 
thorns which crowd out the good. God means 
us to have pleasures, and when kept in their 
place they should be helpers of our life in all 
true ways. But too often pleasures are allowed 
so to fill the thought and engross the interest 
that they crowd out all worthier things, all good 
and beautiful things. 

One of the most serious dangers of life is this 
crowding out of the good. We need to give 
careful thought to the soil in which the sower 
casts the seed. We must give good things the 
first place, and let nothing choke them out. 
Forethought must not be allowed to become 
worry. Money must be kept under our feet, 



CROWDING OUT THE GOOD. 93 

subject to us, and not on the throne, our master. 
Pleasures must never be permitted to interfere 
with work or duty. God and his will must ever 
be kept first. We must never forget that we 
cannot serve God and mammon. 

We should do thorough work in our hearts, 
making sure that the old evils are indeed rooted 
out. Many good people have much trouble 
with old bad habits, which so long have held 
mastery that it is almost impossible to altogether 
extirpate them. Even if they have been con- 
quered and kept down for years, under the in- 
fluence of new ways of living, the old tendencies 
still remain, like roots left hidden in the soil, and 
under favorable conditions reappear. 

Sin dies hard, and there is no life in this world, 
however saintly it may be, however masterful 
the power of grace in it, in which there do not 
still lurk germs of evil, possibilities of sin. Oft- 
times, too, these remains of unholiness assert 
their vitality and mar the beauty of the new 
spiritual life. 

There is a story of a woman whose little child 
had died, leaving emptiness and great loneliness 



94 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

in the home. The mother had skill in art, and 
to fill her hands, also in order to preserve the 
image of the child's lovely features, she devoted 
herself for many days to touching up with her 
brush a photograph she had. As she wrought 
upon the picture the dear face seemed to live 
again, every charm of expression coming out 
under her skilled fingers. When the work was 
finished she laid the photograph away in a drawer. 
After some days she brought it out again, and 
was grieved to see blotches here and there 
on the face. She could not understand it, but 
she set to work once more with loving patience, 
and restored the marred beauty. In a few days, 
however, the blotches had reappeared. Then 
she understood that in the fabric of the paper 
on which the picture had been taken there were 
certain elements which, when chemically acted 
upon by the paints, had produced the blotches. 
So in even the best human nature, however 
deeply imbued and thoroughly cleansed by 
divine grace, there still lurk elements of the old 
sinful life, and evermore these evil qualities will 
work up to the surface and mar and spot the 



CROWDING OUT THE GOOD. 95 

loveliest character. We should never cease to 
pray for cleansing and sanctifying, that God may 
search us and try us, casting out anything that 
is evil, until the last trace of corruption is gone. 
We are never safe while any of the old roots are 
allowed to remain. The thorns will come up 
again, and grow, and will crowd out the things 
that are worthy and beautiful. 



CHAPTER X. 

THINGS TO LEAVE UNDONE. 

I am glad to think 

I am not bound to make the world go right, 

But only to discover and to do, 

With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints. 

Jean Ingelow. 

Something must be left out ; just what it shall 
be is the question. Many hands beckon con- 
tinually. We can follow the beck of only one ; 
which shall it be? There are thousands of 
books standing up in their place in the library, 
each one crying, " Read me." But one is all 
we can read to-day ; which shall it be ? We 
can think in the morning of many things we 
would like to do and might do — visits of cour- 
tesy and kindness, perhaps of helpfulness or 
sympathy, we might pay; affairs of business, 
matters of pleasure or self-improvement, we 
might attend to — but we cannot, with our limi- 
tations of time and strength, do one in ten of 

96 



THINGS TO LEAVE UNDONE. gj 

all these possible things. Which of them shall 
we do? There is a duty of neglecting, of leav- 
ing undone, as well as a duty of faithfulness 
and diligence in doing. 

How shall we know what things not to do? 
Is there any law of selection, any principle which 
should guide us in deciding what we should 
leave undone among the many things that in- 
vite us? 

We may set it down as a first rule that the 
duties which belong to our common vocation or 
calling should always have the precedence. 
We must not neglect these, however urgent 
other calls may be. If a boy is in school his 
school tasks must receive his thought and oc- 
cupy his time, to the exclusion of every other 
occupation, until they have been mastered. If a 
young man is in a business position of any kind 
the duties of his position must be attended to 
with punctuality, promptness, and fidelity, before 
he has a minute for anything else. No matter 
how many outside interests may appeal to his 
sympathy or his desire, nor how eager he may 
be to respond to the appeals, he has no right to 



98 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

listen to one of them until he is free from the 
allotted tasks of the day. 

If a young woman is a teacher in a school 
her engagement binds her to perform the duties 
of her position during certain hours of five days 
every week, for a definite number of months in 
the year. There may come to her many op- 
portunities of doing other things. Poor peo- 
ple may need care and help which she could 
give them. Sick neighbors may require visiting 
and watching with through long nights, and her 
heart may prompt her to undertake this minis- 
try of mercy. Mission work may appeal for 
helpers and she may be eager to enter it, may 
almost feel that she dare not refuse to do so. 
It would be easy for her to be always going 
somewhere on some good errand, filling every 
moment of her time with work aside from her 
school duties. 

But this young woman will make a serious 
mistake if she thinks that it is her duty to do all 
these good and beautiful things which make 
their appeal to her sympathetic heart. Her 
first thing, that to which God has called her for 



THINGS TO LEAVE UNDONE. 99 

the time, at least, that which she has covenanted 
to do, and for which she has been sacredly set 
apart, is her work as a teacher. Not only is she to 
devote the regular school hours to her specific 
duties as teacher, but, besides, she must give all 
the time necessary for conscientious and careful 
preparation for her tasks, so as to do them well, 
and also must secure such measures of rest as 
will fit her for her duties. All this work is hers 
by divine allotment, by divine commandment, 
and if she turns aside to any other task, though 
it be a religious service, she is robbing God. 
Everything else that offers must be resolutely 
neglected until this work has been done well 
enough to present to her Master. 

This teaching is very important. It matters 
not what one's regular calling may be — the 
commonest daily work, or the most lowly office, 
or the highest duty of earth — whatever it is, 
it must always be the first in one's thought and 
in the occupation of one's time. There must 
be no skimping of one's daily task. Even a 
prayer-meeting is not so sacred as one's ordi- 
nary duty which fills the same hour, and it will 



IOO STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

not be right to go to the prayer-meeting when 
in doing so tasks for that hour are left undone. 

Sometimes good people get wrong opinions 
on this subject. They suppose that because it 
is a religious service or some holy task that 
invites, they may be excused for neglecting a 
common secular duty or for being late for some 
engagement. There have been men who failed 
utterly, bringing ruin upon themselves and their 
families, because they neglected their duties in 
running to prayer-meetings or looking after 
what they called religious interests. There 
have been women whose homes suffered, and 
whose children were left uncared for, while 
they were attending conventions or looking 
after some social, sanitary, or religious affair 
outside. They have made themselves believe 
that the importance of such outside services 
was so great that even the holiest duties of 
motherhood and wifehood might be passed by 
in order that these should be done. 

But this is a sad misreading of the divine law. 
It should be set down as an invariable and 
inexorable rule that general appeals to interest 



THINGS TO LEAVE UNDONE. IOI 

and sympathy arc to be denied until one's own 
sacred work has been faithfully done. Nothing 
is so binding upon us as the duty we have 
engaged to do. No work is so sacred to us as 
our own, that which comes to us in our place, 
which no other can do for us. 

After all this duty has been performed with 
conscientious fidelity, then we may think of 
doing the other things which we may find to do. 
Still the question waits, " What shall we do, and 
what shall we neglect? " There is room always 
for wise choosing — we cannot do all that we 
might find to do. There is a vast difference in 
the value and importance of the various oppor- 
tunities or appeals which come to us, and we 
should choose to do those things which bring 
the greatest good to others, or leave the deepest 
permanent result. 

Many of the things which offer it is not worth 
while to do. No good would come to the world 
from our doing of them. It is well for a busy 
man to have an avocation, something to which 
he turns when his day at the duties of his voca- 
tion is ended, but he should make sure that it 



102 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

is an avocation which will prove a benefit not to 
himself only, but to others as well. If we are 
to give account for every idle word we must 
also give account for every idle hour spent in 
any useless occupation. Sometimes the most 
sacred use of a leisure hour is rest, or bright, 
cheerful recreation, to fit one for the serious 
tasks and duties which wait on the morrow. 

But we should always remember that we have 
a duty of not doing, and that many calls for 
our time and strength must be firmly declined. 
Not every open door opens to a duty. The 
tempter opens doors, too, and we are to resist 
all his solicitations. Then there are calls which 
are not to sinful things, but to things that are 
inexpedient. There even come to all of us 
appeals for ministrations of mercy and kindness 
which are not to be regarded, because prior 
duties fill the hands that would quickly turn 
to these new services if they were empty. 
There are first things which must never be 
neglected nor displaced, though a thousand 
appeals clamor for our attention. 

When Jesus said, " Seek ye first the kingdom 



THINGS TO LEAVE UNDONE. 103 

of God and his righteousness," he did not mean 
merely prayer-meetings, sick calls, and social 
visits — he meant the great duties and occupa- 
tions which belong in each day. For most of 
us these fill our waking hours. What we shall 
do in our leisure we shall learn if we are ready 
always to follow the Master's leading. 

It need not even be said that all wrong and 
sinful things should be left undone. Part of the 
confession we must make every day is that we 
have done things which we ought not to have 
done. There is need for more tenderness of 
conscience, more careful searching of heart, 
that we may put out of our life firmly and 
remorselessly everything which ought not to be 
there. We are too easily satisfied with low 
attainments. We are fond of saying that no 
one can live perfectly, that, do the best we can, 
we sin every day. 

There is a story of a good woman who said 
she found a great deal of comfort in the doctrine 
of total depravity. We seem to find a great 
deal of comfort in this teaching, that every one 
has faults and failings. It makes a fine, broad 



104 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

cloak which covers many shortcomings. The 
result is in too many cases that we live on 
altogether too low a plane. As good orthodox 
Christians we have the privilege of denying that 
perfection is possible, and we self-indulgently 
make altogether too little effort to reach the 
unattainable goal. 

We are too tolerant of our own failures and 
sins. We are not so tolerant of the failings and 
sins of others. We hold our neighbors to a very 
rigid account. We make small allowance for 
their infirmities and for the sharpness of their 
temptations. We set a high standard for them 
and expect them to reach it. It would be more 
Christlike if we would reverse this course, show- 
ing charity to others in their weakness and 
failure, and being intolerant of fault and short- 
coming in ourselves. No discovered sin should 
ever be allowed to remain for an hour; to give 
it hospitality is disloyalty to Christ and to truth. 
We should keep before us continually the high- 
est ideal, the perfect life of Christ himself, that 
in the beauty and whiteness of his faultless 
character we may ever detect the flaws in our- 



THINGS TO LEAVE UNDONE. 105 

selves and be stimulated toward whatsoever 
things are true, whatsoever things are lovely. 
Thus, too, our standard will ever be advanc- 
ing, so that what satisfies us to-day will not 
satisfy us a year hence. We shall see, each new 
day, something hitherto tolerated, perhaps loved 
and cherished, which must be given up and left 
out. St. Paul gives us certain lists of traits, 
qualities, and habits belonging to the " old man," 
which he exhorts us to put off in the culture of 
the new life. Browning demands, 

Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to 
be. 

A true life ever reaches upward and strives 
toward better things. It leaves behind the 
things that are imperfect as it presses toward 
perfection. It puts away childish things as it 
grows toward manhood. It leaves undone the 
things that are not right or beautiful, the things 
that are not essential, and gives all its energy to 
the attaining and achieving of the things that 
are excellent, the things that belong to the im- 
perishable and eternal life. 



CHAPTER XI. 

ITS FRUIT IN ITS SEASON. 

He Who plants a tree 

Plants a hope. 

Rootlets up through fibres blindly grope ; 
Leaves unfold into horizons free. 

So man's life must climb 

From the clods of time 

Unto heavens sublime. 
Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree, 
What the glory of thy boughs shall be ? 

Lucy Larcom. 

EVERY life is sent into this world to be a 
blessing. God's thought for every creature he 
makes is beauty and usefulness. The marring 
and the curse we find everywhere are not divine 
purposes, but come from the resistance or the 
perversion of the holy will. The word " sin " 
means missing the mark ; anything or any per- 
son that fails to be beautiful or to be a blessing 
has missed the mark. 

The Bible makes it plain that fruit is the test 
1 06 



ITS FRl'IT r.Y ITS SEASON. 107 

of the Christian life. Jesus made this very clear 
by saying that the branch in the vine which 
beareth not fruit is taken away, cut off, and cast 
out to be burned. It is useless, and there is no 
room on the great vine for any useless branch or 
twig. Jesus said also that the fruitful branch is 
pruned that it may bring forth yet more fruit. 
That is, even ordinary fruitfulness does not quite 
satisfy the husbandman ; he wants every branch 
to do its best, and therefore he applies a system 
of culture which will insure increasing fruitful- 
ness. Jesus made it clear that no one can be 
his follower in truth who is not willing to be a 
luxuriant fruit-bearer: "Herein is my Father 
glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye 
be my disciples. ,, We cannot be his disciples 
if we do not bear much fruit. All the culture 
of the Christian life is toward fruitfulness. 

What is fruitfulness in the spiritual sense? It 
is more than Christian activities. There are 
many people who are active in Christian duty, 
faithful, diligent, energetic, who yet do not bear 
in their own life and character the fruits of the 
Spirit. There are some persons who are ever 



108 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

busy in doing good, whose lives are useful and 
full of helpfulness for others, who yet lack the 
graces of the finest and best spiritual culture. 
St. Paul enumerates among the fruits of the 
Spirit, " love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- 
ness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." 

No doubt true fruitfulness ordinarily includes 
Christian activities. We are to go about doing 
good, as our Master did. It is necessary in 
order to the best life that we should use our 
gifts and talents in all possible forms of helpful- 
ness, to make the world better, and to give com- 
fort, strength, or cheer to other lives. At the 
same time it is essential for truest faithfulness 
that the life shall also bear the fruits of the 
Spirit. Martha was intensely active in her 
serving, but she lacked at least one of the quali- 
ties which belong to true fruitfulness — the 
quiet of God in her heart. 

What is the purpose of fruit? It is not 
merely for ornament or decoration. The fruit 
of trees is for the feeding of men's hunger. 
The same test should be applied to Christian 
life. It is not enough to bear fruit merely for 



ITS FRUIT IV ITS SEASON. 109 

the adornment of our character or the beautify- 
ing of our own life. Fruit for fruit's sake is not 
the motto. We are to do all things for the 
glory of God. The glory of God, however, em- 
braces also the good of others. The command- 
ments of love to God and love to our neighbor 
are linked together in one. He who loves God 
will love his neighbor also. Therefore it is no 
sufficient motive in fruit-bearing that it be for 
the honoring of God's name. We cannot honor 
God's name except by living for others. Hence 
we must bear fruit which will be a blessing to 
others, which will feed the hunger of human 
hearts. 

It is one of the best tests of our life that others 
are helped, cheered, strengthened, or comforted 
by the things in us which are beautiful and 
good. There are some people whose lives are 
benedictions wherever they go. The peace, 
joy, and love of their hearts make others happier 
and better. One of the old legends tells of the 
visits of a goddess to ancient Thebes, and re- 
lates that the people always knew when she had 
been there, although no eye saw her, by the 



110 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

blessings she left behind. She would pause be- 
fore a lightning-blackened tree, and the tree 
would be covered with beautiful vines. She 
would sit down to rest upon a decaying log, and 
the decay would be hidden under lovely moss. 
When she stepped on the muddy shores of the 
sea, violets would spring up in her tracks. 
This is only a legend, but it illustrates the influ- 
ence of the beautiful life in which the fruits of 
the Spirit have full and rich growth. There are 
lives so full of grace and goodness that every 
influence they give forth is toward cheer and 
hope and purity. 

On the other hand, there are lives whose 
every breath is baleful. Another ancient legend 
tells of a maiden that was sent to Alexander 
from some conquered province. She was very 
beautiful, but the most remarkable thing about 
her was her breath, which was like the perfume 
of richest flowers. It was soon discovered, how- 
ever, that she had lived all her life amid poison, 
breathing it, and that her body was full of poi- 
son. Flowers given to her withered on her 
breast. Insects on which she breathed per- 



ITS FRUIT IN ITS SEASON. Ill 

ished. A beautiful bird was brought into her 
room and fell dead. Fanciful as this story is, 
there are lives which in a moral sense are just 
like this maiden. They have become so corrupt 
that everything they touch receives harming. 
Nothing beautiful can live in their presence. 
On the other hand, the Christian life is one 
whose warm atmosphere is a perpetual bene- 
diction. It is like the shadow of Peter, having 
healing power, so that all on whom it falls are 
enriched and blessed by it. 

In one of the Psalms a good life is compared 
to a tree planted by the streams of water. The 
emblem is very suggestive. A tree is not only- 
one of the most beautiful objects in nature, but 
also one of the most useful. One puts it graphi- 
cally in the following lines : 

11 What does he plant who plants a tree? 
He plants the friend of sun and sky; 

He plants the flag of breezes free; 
The shaft of beauty towering high; 
He plants a home to heaven a-nigh, 
For song and mother-croon of bird 
In hushed and happy twilight heard — 

The treble of heaven's harmony — 

These things he plants who plants a tree. 



112 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

" What does he plant who plants a tree? 

He plants cool shade and tender rain, 
And seed and bud of days to be, 

And years that fade and flush again; 

He plants the glory of the plain; 

He plants the forest's heritage; 

The harvest of a coming age; 
The joy that unborn eyes shall see — 
These things he plants who plants a tree. M 

It must be noted that each tree brings forth 
its own fruit. There is widest variety among 
trees ; so also is there in Christian lives. No 
two are the same. It is not w T ise for us to try- 
to copy the mode of fruitfulness of some other 
person. Imitation is one of the most common 
faults in Christian living. One man lives help- 
fully in his own way and hundreds take him as 
their pattern. Thus they lose their own indi- 
viduality and mar both their character and their 
work. The true way is to get full of Christ and 
simply be one's self. No tree tries to bear fruit 
like some other tree ; each one bears its own 
fruit and that is best for it. Each life, too, 
should yield its own fruit. It may not be such 
fine fruit as another life bears, but it is the finest 



ITS FRUIT IN ITS SEASON I 13 

which that life was made to produce and there- 
fore is its best. Much of our strength lies in 
our individuality. 

Another feature of this tree is that it brings 
forth fruit in its season. Different kinds of fruits 
ripen at different times of the year. Some come 
early in the summer, some late. There are 
those who bring forth lovely fruits even in 
childhood, whose lives are tender, thoughtful, 
unselfish, and true. But ordinarily we must not 
look for the fruits of ripened experience in youth- 
time. Child Christians should not be expected 
to be just like older Christians. Naturalness is 
one of the charms of any beautiful life. 

We must not look for the ripeness of mature 
life in those still in the youth-time of experi- 
ence. It is a fruit tree that is in the psalmist's 
mind. This tree brings forth its fruit in its 
season. There are weeks and weeks in which 
the fruit hangs upon the tree, and though it 
have all the semblance of lusciousness, it is still 
hard and sour. By and by, in the time of 
ripening, all is changed, and the fruit is mellow 
and sweet. It is so in life. Many excellent 



114 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

people, with much promise of fruit, do not 
bring their fruit to perfection until the late 
autumn of life. St. Paul was an old man when 
he wrote that he had learned in whatsoever 
state he was therein to be content. This lan- 
guage intimates also that the great lesson was 
hard to learn. Contentment did not come 
naturally to him. It took him many years, well 
into old age, to grow into the sweet spirit. 
Young people, therefore, should not be dis- 
couraged if they cannot now have all the graces 
of gentleness, thoughtfulness, patience, and 
unselfishness which they see and admire so 
much in those who are older. The tree brings 
forth its fruit in its season. If only they abide 
in Christ, receiving from him the blessings of 
his love and grace, they will bring forth the ripe 
fruit in their season. 

Some fruits do not ripen until the frosts 
come ; some lives do not yield their richest and 
best character until the frosts of sorrow have 
fallen upon them. Many Christians go on 
through joyous days, amid prosperity, pure in 
motive, earnest in activity, yet not bringing 



ITS FRUIT IN ITS SEASON. 115 

forth the best fruits. By and by trouble comes, 
adversity, sorrow, loss ; and under the keen 
frosts the fruit is ripened. After that they 
have a sweeter spirit, with more love for Christ, 
with deeper spirituality and a larger measure 
of consecration. 

If we would bear fruit there is a condition we 
must observe — we must abide in Christ. The 
roots of our life must go down deep into his 
life as the roots of the tree penetrate the earth's 
soil. We must live so that the blessings of 
God's love shall reach us through our faith and 
through the word and Spirit of God. No 
Christian can be fruitful who does not receive 
from Christ, through the Holy Spirit, the divine 
grace and blessing. The tree must be planted 
by the streams of water. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE TRUE RELIGION. 

Religion 's all or nothing ; it is no mere smile 

O' contentment, sigh of aspiration, sir — 

No quality o' the finelier-tempered clay 

Like its whiteness or its brightness ; rather stuff, 

Stuff o' the very strife, life of life, and self of self ! 

Robert Browning. 

There were two artists, close friends, one of 
whom excelled in landscape painting and the 
other in depicting the human figure. The 
former had painted a picture in which wood and 
rock and sky were combined in the artist's best 
manner. But the picture remained unsold — no 
one cared to buy it. It lacked something. The 
artist's friend came and said, " Let me take your 
painting." A few days later he brought it back. 
He had added a lovely human figure to the 
matchless landscape. Soon the picture was 
sold. It had lacked the interest of life. 

There are some people whose religion seems 
116 



THE TRUE RELIGION. \\J 

to have a similar lack. It is very beautiful, 
faultless in its creed and its worship, but it lacks 
the human element. It is only landscape, and 
it needs life to make it complete. No religion 
is realizing its true mission unless it touches life 
at its every point. 

It seems to be the thought of many that the 
religion of Christ is only for a little corner of 
their life. They fence off the Sabbath and try 
to make it holy by itself, while they devote the 
other days to secular life, without much effort 
to make them holy. In like manner they have 
certain exercises of devotion each day, which 
they regard as religious, but which also they shut 
off in little closets, so that the noise from the 
great world outside cannot break in to disturb 
the quiet. These they regard as holy moments, 
but they do not think of the other long hours of 
the day as in any sense sacred. 

That is, they try to get the religion of their 
life into little sections by itself, as if all God 
wants of his children is a certain amount of 
formal worship in between the periods of busi- 
ness, struggle, care, and pleasure. 



Il8 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

But this is an altogether mistaken thought of 
the meaning of Christian life. Religion is not 
something which is merely to have its own little 
place among the occupations of our days, some- 
thing separate from and having no relation to 
the other things we are doing. Religion that 
can thus be put into a corner of its own, large 
or small, and kept there, in holy isolation, is not 
religion at all. It was said of Jesus in his life 
among the people that he could not be hid. 
This is always true of Christ wherever lie is. 
He cannot be hid in any heart — he will soon 
reveal himself in the outer life. 

The figures which are used in the Scriptures 
to illustrate divine grace all suggest its perva- 
sive quality. It is compared to leaven, which, 
hid in the heart of the dough, works its way out 
through the lump until the whole mass is leav- 
ened. It is compared to a seed, which, though 
hid in the earth, and seeming to die, yet cannot 
be kept beneath the ground, but comes up in the 
form of a tree or a plant, and grows into strength 
and beauty. It is compared to light, which can- 
not be confined, but presses its way out into the 



THE TRUE RELIGION. I 19 

world until all the space surrounding it is bright- 
ened. It is called life, and life cannot be kept 
in a corner. Indeed, grace is life — a fragment 
of the life of God let down from heaven and 
making a lodgment in a human heart, where it 
grows until it fills all the being. 

All the illustrations of the kingdom of heaven 
in this world represent it as a branch of that 
kingdom, so to speak, set up in a man's heart. 
"The kingdom of heaven is within you," said 
the Master. It is not something that grows up 
by a man, alongside the man's natural life, and 
apart from it, — it is a new principle that is 
brought into his life, whose function it is to in- 
fuse itself into all parts of his nature, permeating 
all his being, expelling whatever is not beautiful 
or worthy, and itself becoming the man's real 
life. " Christ liveth in me," said St. Paul, " and 
that life which I now live in the flesh I live in 
faith." 

From all this it is evident that the object of 
grace in a life is not merely to make one day in 
seven a holy day, and to hallow a few moments 
of each morning and evening, but to absorb and 



120 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

fill the man's whole nature. The Sabbath has 
served its true purpose only when it has spread 
its calm and quiet through all the other days. 
We worship God, especially on that one day, in 
order to gather strength and grace to live for 
God in the six days that follow. It is not wor- 
ship for worship's own sake, that we are to 
render, but worship to get more of God down 
into our life to prepare us for duty and struggle, 
for burden-bearing and toil, for service and 
sorrow. 

It has been said by a distinguished English 
preacher that direct worship is a small part of 
life, and that every human office needs to be 
made holy. True religion will manifest itself in 
every phase of life. We sit down in the quiet 
and read our Bible and get our lesson. We 
know it now, but we have not as yet got it into 
our life, which is the thing we have really to do. 
Knowing that we should love our enemies is not 
the ultimate thing — actually loving our enemies 
is. Knowing that we should be patient is not 
all — we are to practise the lesson of patience 
until it has become a habit in our life. Know- 



THE TRUE RE UG /OAT. 12 I 

ing that we should always submit our will to 
God's is to have a clear mental conception of 
our duty in this regard ; but this is not religion. 
There are many who know well this cardinal 
duty of Christian life who yet continue to chafe 
whenever they cannot have their own way, and 
who struggle and resist and refuse to submit to 
the divine will whenever it appears to be op- 
posed to their own will. They know their lesson, 
but they have not learned to live it. It is living 
it, however, that is religion. 

Even the best of striving will not get all the 
heavenly vision wrought into life. It is not pos- 
sible that we with our clumsy hands can ever 
put into act or word or carve into visible beauty 
all that we dream when we kneel before Christ 
or ponder his words. None of us live any day 
as we meant to live when we set out in the 
morning. 

' k What hand and brain went ever paired? 
What heart alike conceived and dared? 
What act proved all his thought had been? 
What will but felt the fleshy screen? " 

Yet it is to be the aim of our striving always 



122 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

to live our religion, to get the love of our heart 
wrought out in a blessed ministry of kindness. 
Christ lives in us ; and it is ours to manifest the 
life of Christ in our daily living. 

It is evident therefore that it is in the experi- 
ences of week-day life far more than in the 
quiet of the Sabbath and the closet that the 
tests of religion come. It is easy to assent with 
our mind to the commandments, when we sit 
in the church, enjoying the services ; but the 
assent of the life itself can be obtained only 
when we are out in the midst of temptation and 
duty, in contact with men. There it is, alone, 
that we can get the commandments wrought 
into ways of obedience and lines of character. 
And this is the final object of all religious 
teaching and worship — the transforming of our 
life into the beauty of Christ. 

In modern days the thought of Christianity 
has been greatly widened. It is no longer sup- 
posed, by most Christians at least, that its 
sphere is confined to a small section of life. 
We claim all things now for Christ. Our belief 
is that the whole world belongs to our King. 



THE TRUE RELIGION. 1 23 

We claim heathen lands for him, and we are 
pushing the conquest into the heart of every 
country. We claim all occupations and trades, 
and all lines of activity for him. The vocation 
of the minister of the gospel is in one sense no 
more holy than that of the carpenter or the 
merchant. We all are living unto the Lord, 
whatever we are doing, just as much in working 
at a trade as in preaching, and on Monday as 
on the Sabbath. Religion claims all our com- 
mon life and insists on dominating it. It asserts 
its power over the body, which is holy because 
it is the temple of the Holy Ghost. 

In one of St. Paul's letters is this counsel: 
" Let each man abide in that calling wherein he 
was called." This would seem to teach that, as 
a rule, men are not to change their vocation 
when they acknowledge Christ as their Master, 
but are to be Christians where they are. The 
business man is not to become a minister, that 
he may serve Christ better, but is to serve him 
by being a Christian business man. The artist, 
when he accepts Christ, is to remain an artist, 
using his brush to honor Christ. The singer is 



124 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

to sing, but is to sing now for Christ, using her 
voice to start songs in this world of sorrow and 
sin. We are saying now, also, that Christian 
men should take part in politics, infusing into 
this department of life the spirit and the holiness 
of Christ, that the kingdom of heaven may come 
in the state as well as in the church. They are 
likest Christ who go everywhere in his name. 

Enough has been said to show that religion 
is not meant to be merely an adjunct of life, but 
is to enter into the life itself and to change it all 
into the quality of the life of Christ. We come 
together in our church services to give God 
something, to worship him ; but we come also 
and chiefly to receive something from God, to 
have our strength renewed, our spirit quickened, 
that we may go out into the world to live more 
righteously and to be greater blessings to others. 

Peter wished to make three tabernacles on the 
Mount of Transfiguration and to hold the blessed 
heavenly vision there. But his wish was a mis- 
taken one. There was a ministry of love which 
the Master himself had yet to perform. At 
the foot of the mountain, at that very hour, a 



THE TRUE RELIGION. I 25 

poor boy was waiting to be freed from demoni- 
acal possession. A little farther on, Gethsemane 
and Calvary were waiting for Jesus. Think what 
the world would have lost of blessing if Peter's 
prayer had been answered, if Jesus had re- 
mained on the mount ! Then, for Peter him- 
self, and his companions, service was waiting. 
Think, also, what a loss it would have been if 
these apostles had not come down from the 
Transfiguration mount to do the work which 
they afterwards did ! 

Hours of ecstasy are granted us here to fit us 
for richer life and better service for Christ and 
our fellow-men. We pray, and read our Bible, 
and sit at the Lord's table, that we may get new 
power from God to prepare us for being God's 
messengers to the world, and new gifts to carry 
in our hands to hearts that hunger. 

11 They who tread the path of labor follow where my feet have 

trod; 
They who work without complaining do the holy will of God. 
Where the many toil together, there am I among my own; 
Where the tired workman sleepeth, there am I with him alone. 
I, the Peace that passeth knowledge, dwell amid the daily strife; 
I, the Bread of heaven, am broken in the sacrament of life." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE BEAUTY OF THE IMPERFECT. 

" Thank God for failure, shattered hopes, lost aims, 
And ungained garlands, for he knoweth best. 
I longed to win for God and for the truth, 
To spread his kingdom over sea and shore, 
Struggled — and lost, while others gained their crowns. 
Baffled and sore, cast out and left behind — 
• They also serve who only stand and wait ; ' 
Perchance they also win who seem to fail ; 
God's eye sees clearer than our earth-dimmed sight." 

MOST of us fret over our faults and failures. 
Our imperfections discourage us. Our defeats 
ofttimes break our spirit and cause us to give 
up. But this is not true living. When we look 
at it in the right way we see that the experiences 
which have been so disheartening to us really 
contain in them elements of hope and en- 
couragement. 

There is beauty in imperfection. Perhaps we 
have not thought of it, but the imperfect in a 
good life is really the perfect in an incomplete 

126 



THE BEAUTY OF THE IMPERFECT. \2J 

state. It is a stage of progress, a phase of de- 
velopment. It is the picture before the artist 
has finished it. It is beautiful, therefore, in its 
time and place. 

A blossom is beautiful, although compared 
with the ripe, luscious fruit, whose prophecy it 
carries in its heart, it seems very imperfect. The 
young shoot is graceful in its form and wins 
admiration, although it is but the beginning of 
the great tree which by and by it will become. 
A child is not a man. How feeble is infancy ! 
Its powers are undeveloped, its faculties are un- 
trained — it is yet without wisdom, without skill, 
without strength, without ability to do anything 
valiant or noble. It is a very imperfect man. 
Yet who blames a child for its incompleteness, 
its immaturity, its imperfectness? There is 
beauty in its imperfection. 

We are all children of greater or lesser growth. 
Our lives are incomplete, undeveloped. But if 
we are living as we should there is real moral 
beauty in our imperfectness. It is a natural 
and necessary process in the unfolding of the 
perfect. A child's work in school may be very 



128 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

faulty and yet be beautiful and full of encour- 
agement and hope, because it shows faithful 
endeavor and worthy improvement. A writing- 
teacher praises his scholars as he inspects the 
page they have written. He tells them, or 
certain of them, that they have done excel- 
lently. You look at their work, however, and 
you find it very faulty indeed, the writing stiff 
and irregular, the letters rudely formed, and 
you cannot understand why the teacher should 
speak so approvingly of the scholars' work. 
Yet he sees real beauty in it because, when 
compared with yesterday's page, it shows 
marked improvement. 

So it is in all learning. The child actually 
walked three steps alone to-day and the mother 
is delighted with her baby's achievement. These 
were its first steps. A little girl sits at the 
piano and plays through the simplest exercise 
with only a few mistakes, and all the family are 
enthusiastic in their praise of. the performance. 
As music it was most meagre and faulty. If 
the older sister, after her ten years of music- 
lessons and practice, were able to play no better 



THE BEAUTY OF THE IMPERFECT. 1 29 

than the child has done there would have been 
disappointment and no commendation. The im- 
perfect playing was beautiful because, belong- 
ing in the early stages of the child's learning, it 
gave evidence of faithful study and practice. 

A mother found her boy trying to draw. 
Very rude were the attempts, but to her quick 
eye and eager heart the figures were beautiful. 
They had in them the prophecies of the child's 
future and the mother stooped and kissed him 
in her gladness, praising his work. Compared 
with the artist's masterpiece when the boy had 
reached his prime, these rough sketches had no 
loveliness whatever. But they were beautiful 
in their time as the boy's first efforts. 

The same is true of all faithful efforts to learn 
how to live. We may follow Christ very im- 
perfectly, stumbling at every step, realizing but 
in the smallest measure the qualities of ideal 
discipleship ; yet if we are doing our best, and 
are continually striving toward whatsoever 
things are lovely, our efforts and attainments 
are beautiful in the eye of the Master and 
pleasing to him. 



130 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

In the New Testament a distinction is made 
between perfection and blamelessness. We are 
to be presented faultless at the end before the 
presence of the divine glory, but even here, with 
all our imperfection, we are exhorted to live so 
as not to be blamable. That is, we are to do 
our best, living sincerely and unreprovably. 
Then as Christ looks upon us he is pleased. He 
notes many faults, and our best work is full of 
mistakes, but he sees beauty in all the imper- 
fection because we are striving to please him 
and are reaching toward perfection. 

There is a home of wealth and splendor in 
which the most sacred and precious household 
treasure is a piece of puckered sewing. A little 
child one day picked up the mother's work — 
some simple thing she had been making and had 
laid down — and after a half hour's quiet brought 
it to the mother and gave it to her, saying, 
"Mamma, Fs been helping 'ou, 'cause I love 
'ou so." The stitches were long and the sew- 
ing was drawn and puckered. But the mother 
saw only beauty in it all, for it told of the child's 
love and eagerness to help her and please her. 



THE BEAUTY OF THE IMPERFECT. 131 

That night the little one sickened, and in a few 
hours was dead. No wonder the mother calls 
that little piece of puckered sewing one of her 
rarest treasures. Nothing that the most skilful 
hands have wrought, nothing of greatest value 
among all her household possessions, means to 
her half so much as that piece of spoiled stitch- 
ing by her child. 

May not this be something like the way in 
which God looks at his children's humblest 
efforts to do things for him ? We are well aware 
how faulty even the best Christian work done in 
this world must seem to our Master — how full 
of unwisdom, of unbeauty, how foolish much 
of it, how mixed with self and vanity, how un- 
tactful, how indiscreet, how without prayer and 
love, how ignorant, how ungentle. But he 
does not chide us for it, does not blame us for 
doing so imperfectly the sacred things he gives 
us to do. No doubt many of our poor blunders, 
our most faulty pieces of work, are held among 
our Master's most sacred, most cherished treas- 
ures in heaven. 

Then he uses our blundering efforts, if only 



132 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

love and faith be in them, to bless others, to do 
good, to build up his kingdom. Christ is 
saving the world to-day, not through faultless 
work of perfect angels, but through the poor, 
ignorant, flawed, ofttimes very tactless, foolish 
work of disciples who love him and want to 
help him. 

Take another phase of the same truth. We 
usually think of defeat as dishonorable. Some- 
times it is. It is dishonorable when it comes 
through cowardice or lack of effort. We ought 
to train ourselves to be overcomers. But when 
one has bravely done his best and after all has 
gone down in the struggle there is no disgrace 
in his failure. A twofold battle is going on 
whenever a man is fighting with hard conditions 
or adverse circumstances, and it is possible for 
him to fail in one and be victorious in the other. 
Too often a man succeeds in his battle with the 
world at the cost of truth and right. That is 
defeat indeed, over whose dishonor heaven 
grieves. But when a man fails in his struggle 
with circumstances, and yet comes out with his 
manhood untarnished, he is a conqueror indeed, 



THE BEAUTY OF THE IMPERFECT. I 33 

and his victory gives joy to the heart of Christ. 
Such failure as this is, in heaven's sight, glori- 
ous success and no dishonoring of the life. 

Defeat is the school in which most of us have 
to be trained. In all kinds of work men learn 
by making mistakes. The successful business 
man did not begin with success. He learned by 
experience and the experience was very costly. 
The true science of living is not to make no 
mistakes, but not to repeat one's mistakes. 
Defeat when one has done one's best, and when 
one takes a lesson from his defeat, is not some- 
thing to be ashamed of, but something to be 
glad for, since it sets one's feet on a little higher 
plane. Defeat which makes us wiser and better 
is a blessing to us. 

An old man said that in reviewing his life he 
discovered to his great surprise that the best 
things in his character and in his career were 
the fruits of what he regarded as his failures and 
follies. These defeats had wrought in him new 
wisdom and had led to repentings and renewals 
of faith in God, and had thus proved sources 
of richest blessing and good. Probably the 



134 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

same is true in greater or less degree of every 
life. We owe more to our defeats, with the 
humblings of the old nature, the cleansing of 
motive and affection, and the deepening of trust 
in God, than we owe to the prouder experiences 
which we call our successes. 

When we begin to recall the names of the men 
who have most influenced the world for good 
we discover that many of them at least seemed 
to be defeated men and their life a failure. 

" God forbid that I should do this thing and 
flee away from them ! " said Judas Maccabaeus, 
when with only eight hundred faithful men he 
was urged to retire before the Syrian army of 
twenty thousand. " If our time be come, let 
us die manfully for our brethren, and let us not 
stain our honor." 

" Sore was the battle, " writes the historian, 
" as sore as that waged by the three hundred 
at Thermopylae, and the end was the same. 
Judas and his eight hundred were not driven 
from the field, but lay dead on it." 

That seemed a defeat, but there was no dis- 
honor in it. It ranks indeed among the world's 



THE BEAUTY OF THE IMPERFECT. 135 

noblest achievements. In no victory recorded 
is there greater glory. The eight hundred died 
for freedom, and untold blessings came to 
the nation and to the world from their work 
that day. Their defeat was but a mode of 
victory. 

It would be easy to fill pages with the names 
of individuals who have gone down in defeat, 
but who in their very failure have started influ- 
ences which have enriched the world. In the 
centre of this great host is Jesus Christ. The 
story of his blessed life is a story of failure and 
defeat according to the world's estimate. But 
did the cross leave a blot on his name? Is it 
not the very glory of his life that he died thus 
in the darkness that day? Was his career a 
failure? Christianity is the answer. He is the 
Captain also and leader of a great host who like 
him have been defeated and have failed, but 
have made the world richer by their sacrifice. 
Let no one speak of such defeats as blots on 
fair names ; rather they are adornings of glory. 
In all such failure there is divine beauty. 

There is another application of the same 



136 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

truth. Earthly life is full of pain and sorrow. 
God had one Son without sin ; he has none 
without suffering, for Christ was the prince of 
sufferers. The world regards adversity and sor- 
row of every kind as misfortune. It would 
never call a man blessed or happy whose life is 
full of trial and tears. But the gospel turns a 
new light, the light from heaven, upon earthly 
life, and in this wonderful light affliction and 
sorrow appear beautiful. One of our Lord's 
beatitudes is for the troubled life — " Blessed or 
happy are they that mourn." In the light of 
Christ's gospel it is not a favor to be without 
trial. Rather it is a token of God's love when 
we are called to endure chastening. In this 
darkest of all blots on life, as men would regard 
it, there is beauty. One writes — 

" If all our life were one broad glare 

Of sunlight, clear, unclouded ; 

If all our paths were smooth and fair, 

By no soft gloom enshrouded ; 

If all life's flowers were fully blown, 

Without the sweet unfolding, 

And happiness were rudely thrown 

On hands too weak for holding — 



THE BEAUTY OF THE IMPERFECT. 1 37 

Should we not miss the twilight hours, 
The gentle haze and sadness? 
Should we not long for storms and showers, 
To break the constant gladness? 

M If none were sick and none were sad, 

What service could we render? 

I think if we were always glad, 

We scarcely could be tender; 

Did our beloved never need 

Our patient ministration, 

Earth would grow cold and miss, indeed, 

Its sweetest consolation; 

If sorrow never claimed our heart, 

And every wish were granted, 

Patience would die and hope depart — 

Life would be disenchanted." 

These are suggestions of beauty in imperfec- 
tion. We may be sure that ofttimes the eye of 
God sees more to commend in the things we 
grieve over, which to human thought are marred 
and broken, than in the things of which we are 
proud. The Lord seeth not as man seeth. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 

Why comes temptation but for man to meet 

And master and make crouch beneath his foot, 
And so be pedestalled in triumph ? Pray 

11 Lead us into no such temptations, Lord ! " 
Yea, but, O thou whose servants are the bold, 

Lead such temptations by the hand and hair, 
Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, 

That so he may do battle and have praise. 

Robert Browning. 

Temptation has a mission. Our Lord was 
led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be 
tempted. If he had missed being tempted he 
would have missed something that was nec- 
essary to the complete development of his 
manhood. For any man temptation is an op- 
portunity. If the soldier never had a battle, 
how could he become a hero? How could he 
ever learn the art of war? It is foolhardy for 
any one to seek to be tempted, but when temp- 
tation comes to us while we are in the line of 

138 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 1 39 

duty, as we follow the divine guidance, we dare 
not shirk it, nor run away from it ; we must meet 
it with faith and courage, and in doing so we 
shall take a blessing from it. This way lie 
crowns which can be won only by those who 
are victorious in temptation. It is with strug- 
gle as with pain : 

" Put pain from out the world, what room were left 
For thanks to God, for love to man ? " 

Yet there is no fear that any of us may be 
overlooked in this matter, or may miss this 
opportunity. Soldiers sometimes chafe in time 
of war because they are kept in the camp while 
their comrades are in the field. They are 
eager to become real soldiers. But none miss 
struggle with temptation, excepting those who 
die in early childhood. No one escapes the 
experience. Then our foes are also real. 
They are not fancied or imaginary. They are 
of two classes — there are enemies in our own 
heart, and enemies fighting outside. 

The enemies within complicate the struggle. 
In war a traitor in the camp may do great 



140 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

mischief. He is unsuspected. He knows all 
that is going on inside, the movements that are 
planned, the strength or weakness of the cita- 
del, the resources at command. Then he can 
open the door for the enemy and deliver the 
place into his hands. 

So the enemies in our heart have vast power 
of hurting us. They may betray us in the 
very time of our battle with some outside foe 
and cause us to lose the victory; or after we 
have been victorious in the struggle they may 
cause us to fall into some other subtle sin. 
These hidden evils in our own heart make it 
easy for the assailants without to break through 
the gate. They parley with them over the wall 
and treacherously slip the bolt on some postern 
door and let them in. We have much to fear 
from the unholiness that we carry within us. 
If every feeling, disposition, affection, desire, 
and impulse in our heart were pure and 
altogether like Christ, if the enemy came and 
found nothing in us, we should be far safer in 
the midst of this world's wickedness. 

But there are also outside foes. We are like 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 141 

little forts in an enemy's country. All about 
us swarm those who are hostile to us, watching 
every opportunity to break in at some gate or 
to climb over the ramparts to take possession. 
We must never forget that this world is not a 
friend to grace. 

We are in danger of fancying in quiet days 
that the antagonism around us has ceased, and 
that we shall no more be assailed by evil. This 
is always a fatal mistake for any one to make. 
The tempter is never better pleased than when 
he gets us into this kind of confidence. We 
are then off our guard, and it is easy for the 
foe to steal in. When the sentinels at our heart- 
doors and the outposts of the enemy get on 
familiar terms our danger is greatly increased. 
We are safest when we are fully aware of our 
danger. We are kept then ever watchful and 
on the alert. An important counsel, given over 
and over again in the Scriptures, is, " Watch 
that ye enter not into temptation. ,, Incessant 
watchfulness is quite half of every Christian's 
defence. 

We should never forget that no hand but our 



I42 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

own can open the door to the tempter. Every- 
man's house is his castle, and no one can cross 
the threshold but by his permission. This is true 
of the good as well as of the evil. No angel 
of heaven can gain access to our heart unless 
we show him hospitality. Even God himself, 
with all his omnipotence, can enter only if we 
will ; he will never force his way into our heart. 
With all the gifts of divine love in his hands for 
us, Christ only comes to our door and knocks, 
and stands and waits. We must open the door 
if he is to come in. The same is true of evil 
No temptation can ever compel its way with us. 
Our quiet, persistent " No " will keep it out. If 
we resist the devil he will flee from us. We 
cannot hinder temptations flying about us like 
birds, but it is our fault if they build their nests 
in our heart. 

The enemies without us are of many kinds. 
There are evil men who are under the control 
of Satan, filled with his spirit, and who come to 
us continually with temptations to sin. We 
need to be on our guard against these. They are 
among those whom we meet daily in our com- 



NO IV TO MEET TEMPTATION. 143 

mon intercourse. We cannot keep ourselves 
apart from them, and we need, therefore, to watch 
against their unholy influence. Many a young 
person is led away from God and into sin by a 
friendship which at first seems altogether harm- 
less, and even sweet. 

The upas tree which grows in Java has an 
acrid, milky juice which contains a virulent 
poison. According to the story told by a Dutch 
surgeon about a hundred years ago, the exhala- 
tions of this tree are fatal to both animal and 
vegetable life. Birds flying over the tree fall 
dead. No flower or plant will live near the tree. 
The story is probably untrue, but it illustrates 
human lives in this world whose influence always 
leaves a blight on others. They may be win- 
ning and attractive. They may come in the 
guise of friendship and wear the garb of inno- 
cence, but they have absorbed the poison of 
evil until their very breath is deadly. One can- 
not be with them, accepting their friendship, or 
coming under their influence, without being 
hurt by them. The sweet flowers of purity 
wither in their presence. There are men and 



144 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

women whose merest touch is defiling, who 
carry moral blight for other lives wherever they 
go. 

How can we hope to live unhurt in this world 
so full of evil and danger? This is one of the 
most serious problems of Christian living. Yet 
it is possible for us to do it through the grace 
and help of Christ. We can never do it with- 
out Christ, but we are assured that he can keep 
us. One inspired word tells us that he is able to 
keep us from stumbling, and to set us before the 
presence of his glory without blemish in exceed- 
ing joy. The secret of safety lies, therefore, in 
staying ever in the keeping of Christ. 

We miss much of the comfort we should get 
from Christ by narrowing our thought of his 
redeeming work. This was not all wrought on 
the cross, when he there gave himself for us. 
Comfort should come to us from the knowledge 
that he was tempted in all points like as we are, 
yet without sin. That is, he met every form of 
temptation and of evil, and was victorious. This 
assures us, first, of his sympathy with us in all 
our temptations — he knows what the struggle 



HOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 1 45 

means. Then, having himself overcome, he is 
able to help us to overcome. 

We should never forget that Jesus Christ is 
living. He is our personal friend, with us in 
every battle. Too often this element of faith is 
wanting in our experience. We look back to 
the cross for help, while our help is close beside 
us. Moses endured as seeing him who is invis- 
ible. He did not see God — no eye can see 
him ; but it was as if he saw him. His faith 
made God as real to him as if God were actually 
visible to his sight. If we have such faith in 
the living Christ no temptation can ever over- 
master us ; we shall be more than conquerors 
through him that loved us. 

The trouble with us ofttimes is, however, that 
we forget Christ, and then we fall. If we would 
always believe that he is with us, and then 
always remember it, we should not fall in 
temptations. When Frederick Arnold was writ- 
ing the life of F. W. Robertson he went to 
Brighton to talk with Robertson's friends, to 
find incidents for his biography. Among other 
places, he went to a bookseller's shop, and 



146 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

learned that the proprietor had been a constant 
attendant upon Robertson's ministry and had 
in his parlor a picture of the great preacher. 
The bookseller said to Mr. Arnold, " Do you 
see that picture? Whenever I am tempted to 
do a mean thing I run back here and look at 
it. Then I cannot do the mean thing. When- 
ever I feel afraid of some difficulty or some 
obstacle I come and look into those eyes, and 
I go out strong for my struggle." 

If the mere picture of the great preacher had 
such a power over this humble man, how much 
more power will a vision of the Christ have in 
helping us to overcome temptation ! If always 
in the moment of danger we would run to Christ 
and look into his face we could not commit the 
sin. This is one of the great secrets of meeting 
and overcoming temptation. 

Thus temptation may be so met as to be 
transformed into a help, so met at least as to be 
compelled to yield up a blessing to the victor. 
We are stronger for having overcome. Then 
the experience of struggle and victory prepares 
us to be guide, helper, and friend to others in 



NOW TO MEET TEMPTATION. 1 47 

their desert of temptation. But we should 
never forget that only in Christ can we over- 
come. He who enters the terrible conflict 
without the aid of the strong Son of God can 
only fail and perish on the field. «* 



CHAPTER XV. 

AT THE PULL PKICE. 

Only a life of barren pain 
Wet with sorrowful tears for rain ; 
Warmed sometimes by a wandering gleam 
Of joy that seemed but a happy dream. 
A life as common and brown and bare 
As the box of earth in the window there ; 
Yet it bore at last the precious bloom 
Of a perfect soul in a narrow room — 
Pure as the snowy leaves that fold 
Over the flower's heart of gold. 

Henry van Dyke. 

We must pay the full price for all we get in 
the market of life. There are no auctions and 
bargain tables where things of real value are 
sold for a trifle. Of course there are cheap 
things offered, things sometimes, too, which 
seem to be very valuable ; but those who buy 
them discover sooner or later that they are only 
tinsel, tawdry things, whose brightness is gone 
in a moment, and that in taking them, even at 
so cheap a rate, they have been sadly cheated. 

148 



AT THE FULL PRLCE. 1 49 

We cannot buy real diamonds for a mere song; 
we must pay their full value to get them. That 
which costs nothing is worth nothing. 

It is so in education. Not infrequently do 
we see advertisements of quick methods of 
reaching high attainments — a language, or a 
science, or an art, in twelve lessons. But only 
the foolish and indolent are lured to believe in 
such royal roads to anything worth while. 

Some students try to get through school 
or college easily. They may succeed in a way, 
too, by using keys and interlinears, and by 
practising deceptions of various kinds. They 
may pass their examinations after a fashion, 
and get through, being graduated at length with 
their class. They may boast of their shrewd- 
ness in eluding the keen discernment of their 
teachers, but the harm of it all is done to them- 
selves. They are the losers, not the teachers. 
It is themselves they have cheated. They 
think they have got something for nothing. 
No, they have got nothing for nothing. Their 
diploma is only a lie — there is nothing in them 
to correspond with its flattering statements. 



150 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

And nothing worse can happen to any one than 
to be taken by others for what he is not. 
Sooner or later the truth must be known, and 
when it is discovered that a man's certificates 
are false, that there is nothing in him to justify 
them, the revelation is very humiliating. 

We need along the years of our life every 
item and detail of preparation that is brought 
within our reach in our school and training days. 
He who fails to use his opportunities, to make 
ready in every possible way for the calling he 
is to pursue, is preparing mortification and 
failure for himself in the days when in the stress 
of life's duty he shall find himself wanting. " A 
lesson missed in boyhood is a chance for disaster 
in future years." A whole curriculum missed is 
preparation for a career of inefficiency and dis- 
honor. It is fatal folly to chuckle over getting 
through college without hard study. The man 
who does the chuckling is to be pitied, not con- 
gratulated. A true education can be got only 
by paying the full price. That which is worth 
having we can get only by hard, patient, per- 
sistent study. 



AT THE FULL PRICE. 15 1 

Or take knowledge, culture. Every true- 
hearted man desires to be intelligent. But there 
is only one way to win this attainment — you 
must pay the full price. Indolence never yet 
won it. You cannot pick it up as one may find 
a diamond lying on the street and appropriate 
it for his enriching. The gold must be dug out 
of the depths of the rock, dug out grain by grain, 
dug out, too, by your own hands. It is wealth 
one cannot get by inheritance, as men get farms 
and money and stocks for which they have never 
toiled. It is a treasure which no one can give 
unto us, however willing he might be to do it. 
We must gather it for ourselves, must pick the 
precious metal out of the hard rocks with our 
own pick. 

A rich man can become possessor of many 
things by paying for them. Men are glad to 
work for him to get his gold. It is said that 
with money in abundance there is nothing one 
cannot buy. But though he were willing to pay 
out his millions for it, a man cannot get knowl- 
edge, intelligence, culture, wisdom, for money. 
These are treasures which he can make his own 



152 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

only by long, diligent, unwearied, unresting 
study. Nothing less than the full price will buy 
these attainments. Nor can there be any vicar- 
iousness in this matter. No one can take upon 
himself the toil, the study, the patient research, 
the self-denying discipline, and then give us the 
benefits, the results. Every man must bear his 
own burden, must pay the price for himself. 

Another prize that can be got only by paying 
for it its full value is character. Many people 
have fine dreams of moral and spiritual beauty 
which never become anything more than dreams, 
because they will not work them out in pain, 
struggle, and self-restraint. Here is an incident 
from a private:. letter just received: 

" One day, lately, one of my little music 
pupils, an old-fashioned, sweet little girl about 
nine years old, was playing scales and octaves, 
when she turned to me and said, ' Oh, Miss 
Graham, my hands are so tired ! ' 

" I said, ' Never mind, Norma ; just try to play 
them once or twice more. The longer you prac- 
tise them, the stronger your hands will grow, 
so that after a while you will not feel it at all/ 



AT THE FULL PRLCE. 153 

" She turned the gentle little face weariedly 
to me as she said : ' Miss Graham, it seems as if 
everything that strengthens hurts ! ' 

" I gave her something else, but I thought : 
1 Yes, my dear little girl, everything that 
strengthens hurts/ " 

The child was right. It is true in music, it is 
true in all art, it is true in the making of char- 
acter ; everything that strengthens hurts, costs 
pain and self-denial. We must die to live. We 
must crucify the flesh in order that we may find 
spiritual gains. 

Persons sometimes think that religion imparts 
qualities of character, traits of disposition, ele- 
ments of spiritual beauty, without any cost of 
effort to him who receives these gifts. But it 
is not thus that even Christ helps us in the mak- 
ing of our life. He came to give life and he 
gives it abundantly to all who will take it. It 
cost him, too, to bring this blessing of life within 
our reach — he died that we might live. He 
did not merely bring heaven's gifts down to 
earth as one might bring flowers, and scatter 
them at our feet. He paid the full price for the 



154 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

blessings which he bestows. Nor, while they 
are free gifts to us, can we pick them up as we 
would flowers. It costs to become a friend of 
Christ. His followers are transformed — old 
things pass away, and all things become new. 
Those who believe on him are fashioned into 
his image. But these blessings do not come 
easily. The heavenly graces are not put into 
our life as one might hangup lovely pictures on 
the walls to adorn a home. They can become 
ours only through our own experience. They 
must be wrought into our life in a sense by 
our own hands. We must work out our own 
salvation, although it is God that worketh in us 
both to will and to work. 

For example, patience is not put into any 
one's life as one brings in a piece of new furni- 
ture. You cannot merely accept patience as a 
gift from God. The spirit of patience is put 
into your heart when you admit Christ into 
your life, but it is only an inspiration, a heavenly 
vision, a divine impulse, as yet. It is yours to 
accept this inspiration, and let it rule in your 
heart. It is yours to take this heavenly vision, 



AT THE FULL PRICE. I 55 

and make it a reality in your own life. This 
can be done only through long and watchful 
self-discipline. Patience is a lesson to be learned. 
Christ is the teacher, but you are the scholar, 
and it is the scholar who must learn the lesson. 
Not even Christ can learn it for you to spare 
you the effort. Nor can it be made an easy 
lesson for you even by the divine gentleness. 
It costs to grow patient, and you must pay the 
price yourself. 

The same is true of all the elements of a 
noble and worthy character. They come from 
God — they are parts of the life of God brought 
down and incarnated in us. But they can enter 
into our life only through our own co-working 
with the divine Spirit. 

The same principle applies to preparation for 
being of use to others, for being true helpers of 
our fellows. We must learn before we can 
teach, and there is only one school, the school 
of experience, of self-discipline, in which we can 
get the lessons. The only true poets are those 
who have learned in cost of pain and tears the 
songs which they sing for us. The only books 



156 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

on life worth reading are those whose sentences 
have been spelled out word by word in the 
school of struggle. One writes, 

" Will you seek it? Will you brave it? 

'T is a strange and solemn thing, 
Learning long before your teaching, 
Listening long before your preaching, 

Suffering before you sing. 
And the songs that echo longest, 
Deepest, fullest, truest, strongest. 

With your life-blood you will write." 

But we should not shrink from life's lofty 
attainments because it costs us so much to reach 
them. Rather, we should determine to live 
only for the best, whatever the cost. He throws 
his life away who is willing to take only the easy 
prizes, who is not ready to pay the price of 
the nobler, better, worthier, diviner things that 
are set before him. Young people should scorn 
ever to be satisfied with a life of self-indulgence. 
The great Teacher said that he who saveth his 
life shall lose it. He meant the man who with- 
holds himself from hard toil, self-denial, and 
service, who will do only easy things. He said 



AT THE FULL PRLCE. 1 57 

further that he who loses his life, that is, who 
lavishes it in duty, who shrinks from no cost, 
no labor, no sacrifice, in obeying love's behests, 
saves it. The only way to make life truly worth 
while is to empty it out, as Christ emptied out 
his most precious life for God and for the world. 
Only the grain of wheat which falls into the 
ground and dies grows up into beauty and fruit- 
fulness. The grain which is kept warm and dry 
and safe comes to nothing. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE BLESSING OP HARDNESS. 

Then welcome each rebuff 

That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go ! 

Be our joys three parts pain ! 

Strive and hold cheap the strain ; 

Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge 

the throe ! 

Robert Browning. 

It is related of a New England farmer that 
he put all his combativeness into a rough farm 
in Massachusetts and made it one of the best. 
Once a friend said to him, " I should think that 
with your love of farming you would like to 
have a more productive soil to deal with — in 
some Western State, for instance. " 

" I should hate farming in the West," he said 
vigorously. " I should hate to put my spade 
into the ground where it did not hit against a 
rock." 

There are many men who would find no 
158 



THE BLESSING OF HARDNESS. 1 59 

pleasure in life if it were only and always easy. 
Their chief delight is experienced in meeting 
obstacles and overcoming them. A hindrance 
in their path arouses the best that is in them in 
the effort to master it. 

It is true in a measure of all good life that 
it needs antagonism or struggle to develop it. 
He is really not the most fortunate boy who 
has everything done for him, who has no hard- 
ship to endure, no difficulty to encounter, no 
obstacle to surmount. He is envied by those 
who lack what he possesses of worldly fortune. 
Many another boy sighs and says, " If I only had 
his chance I would make my life worth while. 
But there is no use in my trying to make any- 
thing noble of myself with my limitations and 
hindrances. " Yet this boy of fortune is by no 
means to be envied. Only soft, enervated life 
can come from such pampering. 

The boy who lacks the ease, plenty, and 
luxury is the one with the really fine chance in 
life. The necessity which sends him to his 
tasks and keeps him at them early and late is a 
most friendly condition in his life, although he 



l6o STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

may think it just the reverse. To-day one said 
of her brother, " He wants a position, but he 
says it must be one with short hours and light 
duties. He would like to go to work at nine and 
quit at three. " Yet that same fine young fellow's 
father has been an honest, hard-working brick- 
layer for forty years, with days of ten hours or 
longer. It was in such toiling that this good 
man, now growing old, built up his worthy 
character and provided for his family, this boy 
included. The son, however, has no thought 
of being his father's successor in such life. He 
must have easy work and short hours. 

Time will tell what kind of manhood he will 
make for himself. It looks now as if he would 
be of small account in the world. He has not 
found his nine-to-three-o'clock place, and at the 
age of thirty is hanging about the house, idle, 
wearing good clothes, and smoking cigarettes, 
while his father, at sixty, is toiling day after 
day at his bricklaying, finding it hard to earn 
enough to support his family and keep his 
gentleman son in easy indolence. It needs no 
prophet to tell the kind of man that will be 



THE BLESSING OF HARDNESS. l6l 

evolved from such a life of self-indulgence as 
this young man has elected. 

Hardness is the only true school of good life. 
The father who tries to save his son from 
struggle and work is irreparably hurting the 
boy's character and crippling him so that he 
cannot run the race of life nor fight its battles 
with any measure of success. The men who 
stand up among other men, strong, wise, vic- 
torious, are the men who have been brought up 
in the school of hardness. They learn in the 
fields of active life how to live. They knit 
thews of strength for themselves in doing life's 
tasks and bearing its burdens. They learn 
lessons in failures. 

Said the president of one of our great univer- 
sities, in addressing his students, " Show me the 
young man who has had failure and has now 
won his way to success, and I will back him." 
A man who has never had any failure, whose 
course has been one of unbroken prosperity, 
has not the resources of strength and endurance 
stored away in his life that he has who has 
suffered defeats and then has risen again and 



1 62 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

pressed forward to victory. The latter has been 
growing manhood while he was suffering earthly 
defeat. A true man never can be really 
defeated. He may fail in business, but not in 
character. According to the English poet he is 

" One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, 

Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 

Sleep to wake." 

The angels must watch with eager interest 
the man who is going through hard struggle 
which tries his spirit — they watch to see that 
he endures. They do not try to make the 
struggle less hard, but in the moment of faint- 
ness and wavering — if there be such a moment 
— they whisper cheer and encouragement, that 
the man may not faint. We have a beautiful 
illustration of this in our Lord's experience in 
Gethsemane. Angels came — not to take the 
cup away, but to strengthen him that he might 
not sink down in the darkness. 

There is a wonderful Scripture word which 
shows the divine interest in human struggle, and 



THE BLESSING OF HARDNESS. 1 63 

tells us how and when the interest is shown : 
14 There hath no temptation taken you but such 
as man can bear : but God is faithful, who will 
not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are 
able ; but will with the temptation make also 
the way of escape, that ye may be able to 
endure it." God does not promise to save us 
from struggle and hardship, for in no other 
school could he make men of us. Nor does he 
promise to make the hard way easier for us, 
for that would be to lower the standard of 
attainment and of character which he has set 
for us. But he has promised, when the stress 
is growing too sore, to give us strength, that we 
fail not. 

Life is full of sudden changes in which hard- 
ness comes unexpectedly to many persons. By 
some rude experience they are tossed out of the 
cosey nest in which they had been so happily 
nourished, and without warning are called to 
endure the world's cold and hardness almost 
unaided by human help. There are many 
young women, for example, who have been 
brought up in luxurious circumstances, never 



1 64 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

knowing a care, never required to give a 
moment's thought to the providence of their 
own life, as to what they shall eat, or what they 
shall drink, or wherewithal they shall be clothed, 
who by the loss of their father have both shelter 
and support taken away. They must now leave 
the quiet refuge, in which they have been so 
gently reared, and go forth to face the storms 
and struggles of life for themselves. Instead of 
being cared for and ministered unto by strong, 
thoughtful love, their own hands must now find 
employment in which to earn bread for them- 
selves, and perhaps for other home-loved ones 
as well. 

There is something startling in the first ex- 
perience of such a condition. No wonder that 
many young women are dismayed as they face 
the new responsibility. Well is it for them if 
in the happy days that are gone their hands 
have been trained to do something which they 
can now take up as a means of livelihood. No 
girl, however luxurious her home, however 
adequately provided for against misfortune she 
may seem to be, should fail to learn something, 



THE BLESSING OF HARDNESS. 1 65 

some art, some handicraft, by which if adver- 
sity should ever come she may earn her own 
living. Such a preparation is like a life- 
preserver on the great ocean steamer. If dis- 
aster does come it is the one hope of safety. 
A woman who is conscious of her ability to pro- 
vide for herself if it should become necessary 
is not afraid of life's vicissitudes and is not 
overwhelmed by calamity when it comes, leav- 
ing her with nothing. 

In any case, however, it is a serious crisis in 
a young girl's life when she is compelled to go 
into the world to fight its battles for herself. 
What can she do ? How can she keep herself 
gentle and sweet amid the roughness and bitter- 
ness which she must experience? How can she, 
with her delicate strength, fight the battles and 
endure the struggles amid which she must now 
live? Will she not beneath the tread of the 
relentless forces of evil be crushed like a lily in 
the street under trampling hoofs? 

Yet one of the most wonderful triumphs of 
Christian life is seen just at this point in the 
thousands of young women who live victori- 



1 66 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

ously in their hard condition, passing through 
the ordeal unhurt, with character enriched and 
developed into nobler beauty. Instead of fall- 
ing in the battle or coming out with beauty 
tarnished, they emerge more than conquerors, 
with heaven's light in their eye. Instead of 
losing the sweet bloom of their womanliness in 
their rough encounters with the world, they pass 
through'* all the strange experiences, not only 
with purity and delicacy unsullied, but with 
transfigured loveliness. 

We naturally pity those whom we see thrust 
out into the world to bear burdens too heavy 
for their frail shoulders, and to face circum- 
stances of hardship and peril ; but our pity is 
changed to admiration as we watch them and 
see with what quiet courage they pass through 
it all. What, it had seemed to us, must destroy 
all that was lovely in them has really made 
nobler women of them. 

A thoughtful writer has said : " The great 
question whether we shall live to any purpose 
or not, whether we shall grow strong in mind 
and heart, or be weak and pitiable, depends on 



THE BLESSING OF HARDNESS. 167 

nothing so much as our use of adverse circum- 
stances. Outward evils are designed to school 
our passions and to rouse our faculties and vir- 
tues into intenser action. Sometimes they 
seem even to create new powers. Difficulty is 
the element and resistance the true work of 
man. Self-culture never goes on so fast as 
when embarrassed circumstances, the opposition 
of men or the elements, unexpected changes of 
the times, or other forms of suffering, instead of 
disheartening, throw us on our inward resources, 
turn us for strength to God, clear up to us the 
great purpose of life, and inspire calm resolu- 
tion." 

We are always at school in this world. God 
is teaching us the things we need to learn. He 
wants us to make all we can of our life. The 
lessons are not easy — sometimes they are very 
hard. But the hardest lessons are the best, for 
they bring out in us the finest qualities, if only 
we learn them well. Those, therefore, who 
find themselves in what may seem adverse con- 
ditions, compelled to face hardship, endure op- 
position, and pass through struggle, should 



1 68 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

quietly accept the responsibility, and, trusting 
in Christ for guidance and strength, go firmly 
and courageously forward, conscious that they 
have now a chance to grow strong and develop 
in themselves the qualities of worthy and noble 
character. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE MINISTRY OF HINDRANCES. 

** O life, so full of storm and stress, 

O bitter wind, Euroclydon, 
That strews the shore with shipwrecked hopes, 

What shall our sad hearts rest upon? 
Come, blessed angel of the Lord, 

Stand thou beside us, calm and strong ; 
Hide thou our lives with Christ in God, 

And change our sorrows to a song." 

SOME people are vexed and disheartened by 
obstacles and difficulties. They look upon them 
as hindrances in the way of their progress. To 
them the ideal life would be one without opposi- 
tion or antagonism, with only favoring circum- 
stances, with nothing to impede its movement, 
with no burdensome tasks, no struggles, no 
hardships, no disappointments. 

But even if such a life were possible he would 
be most unfortunate who should experience it. 
None of us know or dream how much we owe 
to the resistances we meet. If learning were 

169 



170 STRENGTH AMD BEAUTY, 

easy our mental powers would never be de- 
veloped. If work were not necessary our bodies 
would never grow into vigor and strength. If 
we were put into this world to do nothing, with 
no responsibility, with no share of the world's 
burdens to carry, just to be cared for as the 
birds are, we should never be anything but 
children in character and experience. If it 
were not necessary for us to choose between 
right and wrong, and good and evil, we should 
have only the untried inexperience of innocence, 
with no moral vigor, no tested and disciplined 
strength. In all life growth is attained through 
exertion, effort, struggle. The easy career 
makes nothing of itself. Antagonism, at which 
many chafe, really provides golden opportuni- 
ties for development. 

It is important that we understand well this 
law of life. There are those who always re- 
gard hindrances as evils, as real antagonisms. 
Some persons even begin to doubt God's love 
when they find themselves face to face with hard 
conditions, when they are called to meet losses 
or sore trials. They are discouraged at finding 



THE MINISTRY OF HINDRANCES. \J\ 

it so hard to be faithful to God and loyal to 
duty. Really, however, hard things are tokens 
of God's favor. If our best friend is he who tries 
to make something of us, not he who would 
make things easy for us, surely God's friend- 
ship is shown in the experiences in which the 
man or woman in us shall be developed and 
trained. When God makes it necessary for us 
to struggle, to bear burdens, to fight battles, to 
put all our powers to the test, he is giving us a 
chance to grow. 

It is worth our while, therefore, to consider the 
meaning of obstacles and antagonisms, as they 
come into our experience. They are not the 
work of an adversary. Certainly they are not 
angels of God standing in the way to turn us 
back, like the angel that confronted Balaam in 
the narrow path. We are not to regard them as 
meeting us to cut off our progress, to hinder our 
advance. At least many of the opposing things 
which we encounter are meant to be overcome — 
that is why they come to meet us. They hold 
in themselves secrets of blessing, of good, of 
strength, of experience, which we are to take 



172 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

from them in our own victory over them. The 
best things of life are to be won on fields of 
struggle. In the letters to the seven churches 
in the book of Revelation the glorious honors 
which are offered are all prizes for victors. In 
every case it is " to him that overcometh " that 
the blessings are promised. They lie beyond 
battlefields, and we must fight to get them. 
Robert Browning asks: 

Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
And master and make crouch beneath his foot, 
And so be pedestalled in triumph? 

We should miss many of life's best things, 
therefore, if we regarded all the obstacles in our 
path as providential limits set to our progress. 
Instead of being limits they are intended to be 
passed. They hide within themselves good 
gifts of God for us which we shall miss if we 
make no struggle to master them. Nothing 
really worth while can be got easily. We must 
pay a high price for all life's best things. It is 
the treasures that cost us most that most enrich 
us. The finest, purest gold lies deepest and is 



THE MINISTRY OF HINDRANCES. \J$ 

hardest to find and dig out. We must make 
sure, therefore, first of all, that the obstacle 
which seems to block our path is not one which 
God really means us to master, taking from it 
its spoil of blessing. The old story of Jacob's 
wrestling illustrates this. It was not an enemy 
who met the patriarch that night by the Jabbok, 
although he seemed to oppose him and soon 
grappled with him as in a struggle of life and 
death. The wrestler was God's messenger and 
he had a blessing for Jacob, but it could be got 
only in a victorious struggle. All night the 
contest went on. At last Jacob prevailed, not 
by physical strength, but really through being 
defeated. He went lame and limping from the 
place of wrestling, but there was a new light in 
his eyes and a new power in his heart ; he had 
got a blessing in his struggle. 

This story is a parable of all life's antag- 
onisms. They seem to be enemies, intent on 
doing us harm ; but really they are our friends, 
bearing divine gifts and blessings for us which, 
however, we can get only in victorious wrest- 
lings. Ofttimes, too, we are lamed in the 



174 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

fierce contest, but the shrinking of our natural 
strength is the mark of new power in us. Limp- 
ing Jacob was Israel now, a prince with God. 

But not always is our wrestling victorious. 
There are in every earnest life obstacles which 
prove impassable barriers in our course. Strive 
as we may, we cannot surmount them. The 
door is shut in our face, and we cannot open 
it. Human strength avails not to cut its way 
through the lines of environment. We are 
defeated, and can do nothing but submit. 

Now, the question is, Are these unavailing 
efforts real failures? Have we sinned in not 
succeeding? Ought we not to have been victo- 
rious? Is there shame in our being driven 
back or held at bay? The answer is, that if we 
have done our best to win, and still come short, 
we may accept our failure as God's will for us. 
Then we shall find that the blessing which we 
thought to get in overcoming becomes ours in 
defeat. That is, God's withholding from us 
what we sought was a better good than the 
granting of the desired thing would have been. 
Perhaps it was some earthly favor or treasure 



THE MINISTRY OF HINDRANCES. 1 75 

we craved. If we had succeeded in getting 
it, it might not have proved a real blessing 
after all. Perhaps we were meant to get the 
blessing in the striving and then in the discipline 
of submission when after all the prize was not 
grasped. 

If we believe in Providence — that there is a 
Hand moving amid all life's affairs, so directing 
and adjusting them that for each one who loves 
God good is continually wrought out — we find 
comfort in the thought that when we fail it is 
our Father who suffers us not to succeed ; that 
it is he who sets up and bars the gate in the 
path we sought so eagerly to enter. We may 
certainly believe this of hindrances which are 
invincible — inevitableness is clearly God's will 
for us. We may believe, also, that the true 
blessing is, then, in the not having, rather than, 
as we supposed, in the having. 

Some flowers have poison mingled in their 
cup of fragrance ; to pluck the flower would be 
to breathe death. The place we tried so hard 
to win, and which we imagined would have been 
ideal in its honor and opportunity, would have 



176 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

proved a nest of thorns, with complications and 
perplexities which would have made our life 
miserable. The money we hoped to have made 
would have brought more luxury and ease to 
us, but we would have lost something of our 
spiritual earnestness if we had got it. With too 
many people the growth of worldly possessions 
is balanced by a corresponding loss of heavenly 
longings. 

Life is ofttimes long enough to allow good 
men in later years to thank God for experiences 
which in earlier years they wept over as grievous 
disappointments and irreparable losses. The 
ploughshare seems to work hopeless destruction 
as it cuts its way across the field. But it is not 
long before it is seen that what seemed ruin is 
indeed a process in the renewal of life and 
beauty. By and by a golden harvest waves on 
the field. 

We have found a great secret of peace when 
we have learned to see the hand of God in the 
withholding of what we sought and in the tak- 
ing away of our cherished joys as well as in the 
giving of favors. Job said it was the Lord that 



THE MINISTRY OF HINDRANCES. \JJ 

took away his property and his children, and in 
this belief he rested and sang. We may be sure 
that nothing can be lost in God's hands. When 
he takes our joys and treasures from us they 
are safe in his keeping. 

" God keeps a niche 
In heaven to hold our idols; and albeit 
He brake them to our faces and denied 
That our close kisses should impair their white, 
I know we shall behold them, raised, complete, 
The dust swept from their beauty " — 

and that after a while he will give them back to 
us in a way in which we can keep them forever. 
Of another thing we may be sure also, when 
we see God's hand in the taking from us of the 
things we love, — that there is compensation, 
some better thing in place of that which is re- 
moved. We may be poorer for what has been 
taken away, but what God does for his children 
he does in love. We need not trouble ourselves 
to seek reasons — it is better for us to believe 
so confidently in our Father's love that not a 
shadow of doubt or fear shall ever pass over us, 
whatever the disappointment or the failure of 



178 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

hope may be. When God shuts a door it would 
better be shut — we could find no true good in 
forcing it open. When God takes anything 
from us it is better so — let us not doubt it. 
Some day it will all be plain to us — part of it in 
this world, no doubt, and all of it from the hill- 
tops of heaven. 

We need never fear that God in his love 
mars any of our blessings. Sometimes we are 
tempted to think that he does. He gives us 
something very sweet, and just when we have 
begun to understand its value, and when it has 
become necessary to our happiness, almost to 
our very life, he takes it away. In our deep 
sense of loss we say we cannot see how there 
can be goodness or love in such taking-away of 
a gift. We cannot see, but we may safely trust 
God — who both gave and then took away. 
When we get the blessing again it will be all 
the better for having been withdrawn for a 
time. 

" He lends not; but gives to the end, 
As he loves to the end. If it seem 
That he draws back a gift, comprehend 
■ T is to add to it rather — amend, 



THE MINISTRY OF HINDRANCES. 1 79 

And finish it up to your dream, — 

Or keep — as a mother will toys 
Too costly, though given by herself, 

Till the room shall be stiller from noise, 
And the children more fit for such joys, 

Kept over their heads on a shelf. " 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

IN" TIME OF DEFEAT. 

" Have you missed in your aim ? Well, the mark is still shining; 

Did you faint in the race? Well, take breath for the next ; 
Did the clouds drive you back ? But see yonder their lining ; 

Were you tempted and fell ? Let it serve for a text.'* 

THE decision of the judges in any contest 
tells where the honor goes. Then another test- 
ing begins - — a testing of character. The contest- 
ants themselves are on trial now. By the way 
they bear victory and defeat respectively they 
reveal what sort of men they are. 

A young university student writes to a friend 
of an intercollegiate contest in oratory in which 
he ranked fourth instead of first, as he had 
hoped to rank. He had been chosen to repre- 
sent his university and he feels the chagrin of 
defeat, not so much for himself, as because his 
fellow-students had intrusted to him the honor 
of their institution, and he had failed to win the 
coveted laurel for them. Yet he writes in a 

i So 



IN TIME OF DEFEAT. l8l 

manful way of the matter. There is not in his 
letter a syllable of complaint that any unfairness 
was shown, not a hint that the decision of the 
judges was unjust, not a word in depreciation 
of the merits of the successful competitor. 
Though disappointed himself, he shows that he 
can be glad in another's success even at the cost 
of his own, and writes in a strain that does him 
high honor. 

We must all meet disappointment and experi- 
ence defeat in some way and at some time or 
other. Life is full of contests in which many 
contend, but only one wins the prize. Both in 
the case of the winner and also of the loser 
there is a fine opportunity for noble, beautiful 
behavior. Sometimes the victorious contestant 
bears himself in such a way as to tarnish or 
sadly blot the honor he has won. He shows a 
spirit of vanity and self-conceit, he is puffed up 
by his success, he glories in his achievement. 
Thus the successful contestant, though wearing 
his laurels, may suffer a far worse defeat in him- 
self than if he had failed in the competition. 
He has failed in manliness and in true nobility 



1 82 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

of spirit, and that is the saddest kind of failure 
one can suffer. 

There is a Bible word which says that he who 
rules his own spirit is greater than he that 
taketh a city. Self-mastery is the finest hero- 
ism and the highest achievement in life. The 
winner in the race adds yet greater honor to his 
successes when he bears himself worthily, with- 
out boasting, with quiet modesty and humility, 
with delicate regard to the feelings of those he 
has defeated. 

On the other hand, the loser in the contest robs 
his defeat of all humiliation or dishonor when 
he meets it in a manly and generous way. Too 
often, however, the man who fails in the contest 
fails yet more seriously in the enduring of his 
defeat. He challenges the rightfulness of the 
decision. He speaks disparagingly of his success- 
ful competitor and of his performance. He inti- 
mates that undue influence was brought to bear 
upon the judges. Or he sulks, showing hurt feel- 
ings, as if he had been deeply wronged. In these 
or in other ways he suffers a second defeat far 
more humiliating and dishonoring than that by 



IN TIME OF DEFEAT. 1 83 

which he lost the prize he sought — a defeat of 
manliness, of character, which shows him sadly 
wanting in some of the finest qualities of life. 

There are considerations which lessen the 
sting of defeat, when a man has really done his 
best and then has to permit another to bear 
away the honor which he sought to win. There 
are many contestants and only one can be suc- 
cessful. From the beginning it is known that 
all but one of those striving so earnestly must 
be disappointed. It is no harder for one to be 
defeated than it would be for another. A gen- 
erous man rejoices in another's honoring. There 
is a Scripture teaching which bids us prefer one 
another in honor — that is, be more than willing 
to have the other bear the honor instead of 
ourself. 

It is by no means an easy lesson to learn, 
to rejoice in another's advancement when it 
means that we must accept the lower place. 
Yet when it has been learned it brings sweet 
joy into the heart. The meek shall inherit the 
earth, said our Lord. Meekness does not 
lessen the earnestness of the contestant. He 



1 84 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

does his best. He puts his whole soul into the 
struggle, determined to win if it is in his power. 
He concedes the same right, however, to his 
fellow-competitors. If, then, one of them sur- 
passes him, why should he indulge in bitter 
thoughts or feelings? If he had been victori- 
ous, he would have expected his companions 
to concede the honor to him cheerfully and to 
rejoice in his victory. Now that another has 
won the prize, why should he not be magnani- 
mous and be glad in his comrade's honor? The 
Golden Rule applies here. 

Nothing is more beautiful than to see a man 
who has been fairly defeated hurrahing for his 
successful rival. This is immeasurably better 
than if he were to get angry, or to charge unfair- 
ness, or to show bitterness. One relates, 

" He lost the game: no matter for that — 
He kept his temper and swung his hat 
To cheer the winner. A better way 
Than to lose his temper and win the day." 

Thus there is a twofold testing going on in 
all competitions among men — a testing of abil- 
ity, strength, or skill, as the case may be, and a 



IN TIME OF DEFEAT. 1 85 

testing of the man himself. In the way he 
meets defeat he shows what manner of man he 
is. Any one can sing and be cheerful when 
he has been successful. But to be outstript by 
another and still to keep sweet, saying no 
unseemly word, remaining glad and songful, 
requires far more courage and strength and is 
a much better proof of fine character. 

We are in this world, not merely to get on, 
but to get upward. There are too many people, 
however, who think of success only as getting 
on in worldly ways and who have no higher 
standard. Yet nothing is sadder than to see a 
man growing richer every day, advancing in 
his rank, according to the world's standard, and 
yet in his real life becoming every day less 
noble, less worthy. Every experience ought to 
make us somewhat better, ought to bring out 
in our character some new shade of beauty, and 
develop in us some new phase of Christlikeness. 
The man who cannot endure defeat is not in 
good condition to meet life's struggles. Nothing 
can be better for him than defeat after defeat 
until he has learned his lesson. 



1 86 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

Every pathway has its downs as well as its 
ups. When a man is climbing toward a 
mountain-top he usually begins far away to 
make the ascent. First come the foot-hills and 
the lower ranges with valleys between. The 
upward-rising is not continuous. Sometimes 
he is going upward toward the glittering sum- 
mit, and then he turns downward into a valley. 
Again he ascends and then descends. But all 
the while he is really climbing upward, each 
succeeding hill-top being a little higher than 
the preceding one, until, by and by, he gains 
the highest, the shining peak, the goal of his 
long and painful journey. 

So it is in a true life. The course is never a 
continuous ascent. We advance and then we 
must turn our faces downward for a time, when 
we seem to be losing — going backward. But 
if we are living as we should live, truly and 
victoriously, we are always really advancing. 
Each day finds us a little farther on in the 
things that are worthy and noble than we were 
yesterday. It is possible to seem to fail and 
yet to be victorious in the higher sense. A 



IN TIME OF DEFEAT. I 87 

man may lose money and yet gain in character. 
His business may not be successful, yet if 
meanwhile he has kept himself unspotted from 
the world ancUhas lived righteously and honestly 
before God, he has been a prosperous man. 

It is not in the things one does in life that the 
measure of one's advancement is infallibly regis- 
tered. The true registering is within, in what 
takes place in one's own heart. The final ques- 
tion is not, What have you done? but, What has 
been done in you ? Are you, whether in failures 
or in successes, in defeats or in victories, in 
adversity or in prosperity, ever growing truer, 
gentler, better, more unselfish, more loving? 
That should be the outcome of all life's expe- 
riences. It is possible to be victorious in all 
competition and successful in all endeavor, to be 
rising steadily among men in the things by which 
the world rates men, and yet to be losing con- 
tinually in the things which belong to moral and 
spiritual beauty. Love, joy, peace, long-suffer- 
ing, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, 
self-control — these are the qualities in which 
we must grow if we would be really advancing 



1 88 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

in life as God sees us. And it is possible for a 
man to be making progress in these qualities of 
his heart-life even in the midst of earthly failure. 
Indeed, it is true that men ofttimes learn their 
best lessons in the school of defeat. Nature in 
all of us needs to be disciplined before it reaches 
its best and ripest, and discipline is not achieved 
usually without many lessons in humility. We 
are naturally proud, vain, and self-confident, and 
we need nothing so much as experiences which 
will reveal to us our own weakness and limita- 
tion. Continuous success and victoriousness in 
our own life would only inflate still more our 
miserable self-conceit and nourish in us qualities 
which would only mar the beauty of our char- 
acter. The best school for us is the school of 
defeat, wherein we are made aware of our weak- 
nesses and cured of our wretched vanity and self- 
conceit. Peter's terrible failure made a man of 
him. The self-confidence with which he entered 
his temptation was left behind in the dust where 
he had fallen, and he came again, sifted indeed, 
a smaller man in his own estimation, but a far 
better man. 



IN TIME OF DEFEAT. 1 89 

Yet defeat does not always bring discipline. 
Men do not always rise from the dust the 
stronger. Sometimes failure leads to dishearten- 
ment which darkens into despair. All depends 
on the way one meets the bitter experience. 
Only when the spirit is unconquerable does one 
rise again from defeat, humbled and chastened, 
but not broken, ready for new struggles. But 
if we are even dimly conscious of the splendor 
and glory of the life within us, of its divine pos- 
sibilities, and of the help of God that is ever 
within our reach, we should never for a moment 
despair, nor regard any failure as final. We 
should learn our lesson and go quietly and firmly 
forward to the new struggles that await us, con- 
fident that in the end we shall be more than 
conquerors through Christ who loves us. Some 
one says : " The besetting sin may become the 
guardian angel. Let us thank God that we can 
say it ! Yes, this sin that has sent me weary- 
hearted to bed, and desperate in heart to morn- 
ing work, can be conquered. I do not say 
annihilated, but, better than that, conquered, 
captured, and transfigured into a friend; so that 



190 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

I, at last, shall say, ' My temptation has become 
my strength ; for to the very fight with it I owe 
my force.' " 

" Noble souls, through dust and heat, 
Rise from disaster and defeat 

The stronger, 
And, conscious still of the divine 
Within them, lie on earth supine 

No longer.' ' 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE DUTY OF FAULT-FINDING. 

" For this true nobleness I seek in vain, 
In woman and in man I find it not ; 
I almost weary of my earthly lot, 
My life-springs are dried up with burning pain. 
Thou find'st it not ? I pray thee look again, 

Look inward, through the depths of thine own soul. 
How is it with thee ? Art thou sound and whole ? 
Doth narrow search show thee no earthly stain ? 
Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies 
In other men, sleeping, but never dead, 
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own ; 
Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes, 
Then will light around thy path be shed, 

And thou wilt nevermore be sad and lone." 

THERE is a duty of fault-finding. Perhaps, 
indeed, most persons are diligent enough in 
this department of duty, and yet there may be 
need of a word of exhortation on the subject. 

No doubt there is fault-finding enough in the 
world, such as it is. Some people do little else. 
Nothing pleases them. It would seem to be a 

191 



192 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

pity they had not been consulted before the 
world was made, for there is nothing on which 
they could not have suggested some improve- 
ment. They find fault with God's works and 
with his providence. They criticise the wisdom 
that puts briers on rose bushes. They find fault 
with other people — with their dress, their 
manner, their piety, their mode of worship, their 
work, their speech ; nothing escapes their criti- 
cism. 

All this is unlovely. It is presumptuous — 
what right have we to question the works of the 
divine Creator? What surpassing wisdom have 
we that makes us able to sit in judgment on 
all the world, lightly condemning all others, 
even the best men of our times? Who made us 
a judge of our fellows? 

Yet there is a duty of fault-finding. The 
Master himself teaches it. In the Sermon on 
the Mount he makes it very plain. We must 
note carefully, however, where the duty begins. 
We are to look first after our own faults. 
"Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy 
brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that 



THE DUTY OF FAULT-FINDING. 1 93 

is in thine own eye? " The form of this ques- 
tion suggests that we are naturally inclined to 
pay more attention to flaws and blemishes in 
others than in ourselves, and also that a very 
small fault — a mere mote of fault — in another 
may seem larger to us than a blemish many 
times greater in ourselves. 

Of course, it is easier to see other people's 
faults than our own. Our eyes are set in our 
head in, such a way that we can look at our 
neighbor better than at ourself. Yet we all 
have faults of our own. Most of us have quite 
enough of them to occupy our thought, to the 
exclusion of our neighbor's faults, if only we 
would give them our attention. 

Really, too, our own faults ought to interest 
us more than our neighbor's because they are 
our own, and being our own, we are responsi- 
ble for them. We do not have to answer for 
any other one's sins, but for our own we must 
answer, and the responsibility for getting rid of 
them is ours. " Every man must bear his own 
burden." No faithful friend, no wise teacher, 
can cure our faults for us. If ever they are 



194 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

taken out of our life it must be by our own 
decision, our own faith, our own firm, per- 
sistent effort. The prayer of others may avail 
to bring divine help, and the sympathy and 
encouragement of others may make us stronger 
in our struggle, but the real work is our 
own. 

Then before we are ready to deal in an effec- 
tive way with our neighbor's sins we must get 
measurably right ourself. That is what Jesus 
tells us : " Cast out first the beam out of thine 
own eye ; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast 
out the mote out of thy brother's eye." There 
is little use in our reproving our brother for a 
fault when with half an eye he can see the same 
or some other fault twice as large in us. This is 
one of the principal causes of the smallness of 
our influence in our witnessing for Christ. Our 
lips are sealed by the consciousness that our 
own life is not what it should be. Or if we 
speak men sneer and say that we need not preach 
to them while we live as we do. We must be 
holy ourselves if we would help to make others 
holy. 



THE DUTY OF FAULT-FINDING. 195 

It is a fact that the faults which we usually 
see and criticise in others are the very faults 
which are the most marked in us. Tennyson 
said that if he had been one of the wise men of 
Greece, and had been asked for a wise saying, 
he would have given this : " Every man imputes 
himself." He meant that in our judgment of 
others we show a miniature of ourself. If this 
is true we should be careful in judging others, 
for in doing so we are only revealing our own 
faults. This should lead us also to close scru- 
tiny of our own life, to get rid of the things in 
us which are not beautiful. 

But we also owe to others the duty of fault- 
finding. Among the old Levitical laws was this 
one, "Thou shalt in anywise rebuke thy neigh- 
bor, and not suffer sin upon him." Jesus also 
implied that after we had cast the beam out of 
our own eye, we should help our brother to get 
the mote out of his eye. If we see that a 
friend is falling into some bad habit which will 
impair his usefulness or perhaps in the end bring 
ruin upon his life, we are not faithful to him if 
we remain silent and allow him to go on un- 



196 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

warned. If he should perish in the end, and 
perish because we have failed to warn him of 
his fault or sin, some measure of blame would 
rest upon us forever. 

No other duty, however, is more delicate and 
more difficult than that of fault-finding in such 
cases. It often breaks a friendship, costing us 
our friend. There are those who will even im- 
plore us to tell them their faults, yet who, when 
we have yielded to their entreaty and gently 
mentioned to them something which we believe 
to be a fault, are offended. Our faithfulness has 
made them our enemies. It would seem that 
there are few friendships which will endure such 
a test. Usually it is better not to tell another 
his faults, directly at least. 

In any case there is need of great wisdom. 
We must be sure, first of all, that it is love that 
prompts us to speak of the fault. Too often it 
is in anger and in jealousy that we do it. A man 
loses his temper with his friend and then tells 
him all the bad he knows or imagines of him. 
This is never the true way, and no good can 
come of it. Unless we can go to our brother 



THE DUTY OF FAULT-FINDING. 1 97 

in sincere love, after earnest prayer, and, with 
a heart truly solicitous for his good, deliver our 
unpleasant message, telling him of his sin or 
fault, we would better be silent. 

There are some people who habitually see 
only the faults of others and have no eye for the 
good in them. These are in no wise fitted to be 
fault-finders in the good sense. There is a Rus- 
sian fable of a wise swine named Kavron, which 
found its way into the courtyard of the king's 
palace. It saw only the kitchen and the stable. 
When it came back the mother asked : " Well, 
Kavron, what have you seen? They say that 
kings' palaces are filled with wealth and beauty, 
that there are fine pictures, rich tapestries, and 
valuable gems everywhere." "Ah, this is all 
untrue," answered Kavron. " I saw no pict- 
ures, no tapestries, no diamonds; only dirt and 
offal." 

This is the way some people look at others' 
lives. They visit only the kitchen and the stable. 
They see only the flaws and blemishes, and do 
not get even a glimpse of the noble things which 
are within the palace where the man himself 



198 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

lives. We should train ourselves to look always 
for the good in others, not for the evil ; for the 
noble things, not for the infirmities and spots. 
There is far more good than evil in most people, 
and if we are looking for the good we shall not 
be so apt to see the evil. 

Besides, much of what to us seems fault or 
blemish is really only an imperfect phase of 
development in a life. There is an awkward 
age in many a boy, when it would be most un- 
kind as well as unwise, to criticise him ; in due 
time he will pass through it, and will be self- 
possessed and refined in his bearing. Strength 
of character is usually an evolution, many of 
whose processes appear very uncouth and faulty. 
Childhood and youth are always marked at 
different periods by unlovely features which are 
really incident to certain stages of growth, and 
should not be treated as faults. Unripeness 
and immaturity are not blemishes in their place ; 
in due time they will give place to ripeness and 
maturity. 

But when we do see in our friends faults 
which are indeed faults, and which we believe 



THE DUTY OF FAULT-FINDING. 1 99 

we ought to try to cure, we should go about it 
in love, with prayer, and with wise and gentle 
tact. A gentle, loving way is better than blurt- 
ing out the criticism, as some brusque people 
do, abruptly, calling it frankness, saying that 
they always honestly say what they believe. It 
may be honest and frank enough, but it is not 
the Christ-like way. " What did you preach 
about yesterday? " asked an old clergyman of 
a young minister, one Monday. " On the 
judgment," replied the young man. " Did you 
do it tenderly?" asked the older pastor. We 
should never speak to others of their sins and 
faults unless we can do it tenderly. 

We need patience, too, and sometimes we 
must wait a long time for the opportunity to 
do our duty in this regard, to speak the right 
word. But the right occasion will come if we 
wait for it. Harm is done ofttimes by speaking 
too soon. 

Our Master gives us another important counsel 
on the subject when he says that we must tell 
our brother his fault " between him and thee 
alone." If we love him we should seal our lips 



200 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

to others concerning his faults and go to him 
with the matter alone. Then the only way we 
can ever have a right to tell him of his faults is 
in the name of Christ and as he would do it if 
he were in our place. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE DUTY OF LAUGHTER. 

" It is easy enough to be pleasant 

When life flows along like a song ; 
But the man worth while is the man who will smile 
When everything goes wrong. 

m For the test of the heart is trouble, 
And it always comes with the years, 
And the smile which is worth the praise of the earth 
Is the smile that comes through tears." 

THEY tell us that laughter is dying out among 
men. If so, it is a pity. The Wise Man says 
there is a time to laugh, that is, a time when 
laughter is right, when it is a duty, and when it 
would be wrong not to laugh. Perhaps we have 
not been accustomed to think of laughter in 
this way. We regard it as an agreeable ex- 
ercise, but are not apt to class it among duties, 
like honesty, or kindness. 

It would be a sad thing, however, if laughter 
should be altogether crowded out of life. There 

20 1 



202 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

are other exercises which we could much better 
afford to lose. Think of a world of human beings 
with no laughter, men and women wearing 
everywhere and always grave, serious, solemn 
faces, with no relaxing of the sternness on any 
occasion. Think of the laughter of childhood 
departing from the world, and the laughter of 
youth, — how dull and dreary life would be! 

Laughter has its place in every wholesome, 
healthy life. A man who never smiles is morbid. 
He has lost the joy-chords out of his life. He 
has trained himself to think only of unpleasant 
things, to look only and always at the dark side. 
He has accustomed himself so long to sadness 
that the muscles of his face have become set 
in hard, fixed lines and cannot relax them- 
selves. His thoughts of life are gloomy, and 
the gloom has entered his soul and darkened 
his eyes. 

All this is wrong. It is abnormal, unnatural. 
True, most of us are busy and burdened. Our 
life is full of serious tasks which fill every 
moment and give us little time for unbending. 
Yet hard work should never drive laughter out 



THE DUTY OF LAUGHTER. 203 

of the soul. We should keep a happy heart 
amid the severest toil. We should sing at our 
work. We will work better and far more 
effectively if we keep the music always ringing 
within our breast. "A sad heart tires in a 
mile," runs the old song. " The joy of the 
Lord is your strength," said the Tirshatha to 
the people, as he urged them to rejoicing. Joy 
of spirit makes burdens seem lighter and tasks 
easier. It is probably necessary to require 
silence in certain establishments where people 
work together, but it is not the natural way. 
It would add much to the value of labor if the 
strokes of toil could be the time-beats of joyous 
music. 

Laughter is a token of a good heart and a 
good conscience. Shakespeare said some quite 
uncomplimentary things about the man who 
has no music in his soul. Where there is no 
music, all evils nest. Demons do not laugh 
unless it be the laugh of wicked exultation over 
the mischief they have wrought, or the laughing 
sneer at goodness and virtue. Nothing on earth 
is more beautiful than the merry laugh of child- 



204 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

hood. It is the bubbling-up of the fountain of 
innocence and simplicity in the child's heart. 
It tells of a spirit yet unspoiled by sin, unhurt 
by the world's evil. Spontaneous, happy laugh- 
ter tells always of goodness, and the man who 
never laughs must not blame his fellows if they 
think there is something wrong with his life, 
something dark within. If the streams which 
flow out are only bitter the fountain cannot be 
sweet. 

Even trouble should not quench laughter. 
Sorrow often rolls like a dark flood over human 
lives, and it may sometimes seem as if there 
could be no gladness in the heart thereafter. 
But however great the grief, joy should live 
through it. Christian joy does not have its 
source on the earth, but in heaven, in the ever- 
lasting hills. People who live in the valleys 
amid great mountains have water even in the 
dryest, hottest summer, because they receive 
their supply from springs which flow out of 
the mountains and are unaffected by heat or 
drought. The Christian's springs of joy are 
perennial, because they flow from under the 



THE DUTY OF LAUGHTER. 205 

throne of God. No matter what goes wrong, 
we should still sing and be glad. 

Along the shore one sometimes comes upon 
fresh-water springs which bubble up on the 
edge of the salt sea. The tides roll over them 
and bury them out of sight for the time, but 
when the brackish floods ebb again the springs 
are found sweet as ever. So, after the deepest 
sorrow should the heart's fountains of joy be 
found, still pouring out their streams of glad- 
ness. Christ says much about his people hav- 
ing his joy, a joy which the world can neither 
give nor take away. He says, too, that their 
sorrow shall be turned into joy, meaning that 
the deepest joy in this world is transformed 
sorrow, and not the joy which has never known 
pain. 

If, therefore, we are Christians, grief should 
not crush laughter out of our life. Some 
people seem to think that it would be disloyalty 
to their friends who are gone for them ever to be 
happy again. But this is not true. Of course, 
there is a sense in which we never get over 
sorrow. Our life is never the same after sore 



206 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

bereavement. We carry the marks forever. 
But they should not be marks of sorrow. 
There is a beatitude of the Master's which pro- 
nounces those who mourn blessed or happy, 
because they have God's comfort. God's com- 
fort is heaven's joy entering into the human 
soul. It is not a Lethe which makes men for- 
get pain and loss ; it is a benediction which 
transmutes pain into joy and loss into gain. 
Sorrow healed by God's wise, skilful treatment 
leaves no ugly scars, no bleeding wounds. 
Nothing beautiful is lost in the grief which 
Christ comforts. The sweetest songs sung on 
earth are those learned in the darkened room 
of trial. 

The true problem of living is to pass unhurt 
in our real character through the greatest trials, 
and to have our life softened, enriched, and re- 
fined by every trouble we endure. Therefore, 
we have not met grief aright if we come out of 
it with a loss of joyousness. Our songs should 
be sweeter and our laughter should be gladder, 
if less hilarious, for a baptism of pain. 



THE DUTY OF LAUGHTER. 207 

11 Why make we moan 
For loss that doth enrich us, yet 
With upward yearnings of regret ? 

Bleaker than unmossed stone 
Our lives were but for this immortal gain 
Of unstilled longing and inspiring pain ! 

As thrills of long-hushed tone 
Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine 
With keen vibrations from the touch divine 

Of noble natures gone." 

There is a mission for humor. The man who 
can make others laugh may be a great blessing 
to his fellows. There are times in one's expe- 
rience when a bit of fun is better, more a means 
of grace, than a serious sermon would be. 
There are times when the best help we can give 
to a friend is to make him laugh. The Wise 
Man says : 

A merry heart is a good medicine. 

A hearty laugh would cure many a sickly 
feeling, driving away the blues, and changing 
the whole aspect of life for a man. The gift 
of bright, cheerful humor is one to be envied. 
The man who can keep people laughing at the 



208 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

table is both a promoter of health and a dis- 
penser of happiness. 

We may set laughter down, therefore, among 
Christian duties. Nor is it one of the minor 
duties. There may be no commandment in the 
Decalogue, saying: " Thou shalt laugh," but 
Christ certainly taught that joy is a duty, one of 
the virtues which every Christian should culti- 
vate. No one now believes the old tradition that 
Jesus never smiled, but always wept. He must 
have been a happy-hearted man. St. Paul also 
makes it very clear in his teachings that we 
should rejoice always, and that joy is a fruit of 
the Spirit, an essential quality of the complete 
Christian life. 

It is not hard for young people to laugh ; it 
comes naturally to them. They should culti- 
vate laughter as a Christian grace, never losing 
the art, nor allowing it to fall into disuse. They 
should seek always to be cheerful. Living near 
the heart of Christ, faithfully following his com- 
mandments, and obeying conscience, their lives 
may be always full of gladness and song. Of 
course they will find thorns in their path and 



THE DUTY OF LAUGHTER. 209 

the sun will not always shine. But there will be 
ten times more gladness than sorrow in their 
life, and even the clouds will bring rain with its 
blessing, and pain will make the song sweeter, 
if softer. One tells the story thus : 

" I woke in the night; the stars were hid, 
The skies were cold and gray, 
My soul grew sick with a nameless fear, 
And I scarce had faith to pray. 

14 1 thought of the day's mistakes with tears, 
Of wrong that outmeasured right; 
When lo ! from a rainwashed tree near by 
A bird sang in the night, 

" So soft and so low, so fearlessly, 
So full of a glad content, 
Of a faith that knew the day would break 
Through the wet boughs o'er her bent. 

" I said to my heart, l Behold, a sign ! 
Heart, let us read aright, 
That faith is easy and hope is sure 
To him who sings in the night ! ' " 



CHAPTER XXI. 

MINDING THE HESTS. 

Thou, Lord, art the Father of music, 
Sweet sounds are a whisper from thee ; 
Thou hast made thy creation all anthems 
Though it singeth them all silently. 

F. W. Fabe*. 

Some people think that rests in life are wasted 
time. They suppose that every moment should 
have its work, its activity, its gain, its record of 
good done. There is a sense in which this is 
true. Time is made up of golden minutes, not 
one of which we should suffer to be lost. The 
Master said that for every idle word that men 
speak they must give account. This can be no 
less true of idle minutes or hours. We are to be 
judged not only by the things we do but by the 
things we leave undone. Neglect of a duty is a 
sin. To pass by one who needs cheer or help, 
not giving him what he needs, when it is in our 
power to minister to him, is to sin against him. 

210 



MINDING THE RESTS. 211 

Very strong, therefore, is the pressure of obli- 
gation to fill every moment with faithful duty- 
doing. No doubt there are rests that leave 
blanks in the records and thus become blem- 
ishes, marrings, faults. There is a story of one 
who always carried seeds in his pocket and when 
he found a bare spot, planted some of them that 
the place might become beautiful. So we should 
put into every fragment of time some seed that 
will make the hour or minute a bearer of bless- 
ing to other lives. We cannot afford to let a 
moment go unfilled. 

But there are rests which add to the beauty 
and the completeness of every life ; and there is 
no life which can be altogether complete with- 
out them. Ruskin wrote to a young woman 
these true words : " There is no music in a rest, 
Katie, that I know of, but there is the making 
of music in it. People are always missing that 
part of the life melody, and scrambling on with- 
out counting ; not that it is easy to count, but 
nothing on which so much depends is very easy. 
People are always talking of perseverance and 
courage and fortitude; but patience is the finest 



212 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

and worthiest part of fortitude, and the rarest, 
too. I have known twenty persevering girls to 
one patient one, but it is only the twenty-first 
one who can do her work, out and out, and en- 
joy it. For patience lies at the root of all pleas- 
ures as well as of all powers. " 

The illustration is very suggestive. It is 
indeed with life as with music. The rests on 
the staff in one sense are not a part of the music. 
They call for no sweet notes. Yet they are as 
important in their place as if they were notes to 
be struck or sung. It would spoil the harmony 
if a careless player or singer were to disregard 
the rests and fill the spaces with notes of his own 
improvising. There are rests in life which are 
quite as important in the melody of life as any 
notes on the staff. To overlook them or to fill 
them up is to mar the music. We should mind 
the rests. 

It is not true that we are living worthily only 
when we are doing something. God has strewn 
life with quiet resting-places. Night is one of 
them. Sleep is a divine ordinance — to miss it 
mars the music. The Sabbath is another of the 



MINDING THE RESTS, 213 

rests on the staff which the great Master-com- 
poser wrote in himself. " Six days shalt thou 
labor " — then comes the rest, the one no more 
positive a command than the other. To ignore 
this rest and crowd into its sacred space the 
sounds of labor is not only to break a divine 
commandment, but is also to introduce discords 
into God's music. It takes the Sabbath quiet 
to complete the melody of the week. " Sun- 
day," says Longfellow, " is like a stile between 
the fields of toil, where we can kneel and pray, 
or sit and meditate/' 

There are other periods in every life in which 
rests are written. There is a time to work and 
a time to rest. God never intended that we 
shall fill the days so full of toil as not to leave 
any time for fellowships of home-life, for inter- 
course with friends, for pleasure and amusement. 
There is no true music in that living under in- 
cessant pressure which hurries on from duty to 
duty, from task to task, allowing not a moment 
of leisure, not a restful heart-beat, from morning 
until night. Far sweeter and more beautiful is 
the life that goes from task to task promptly but 



214 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

never hurriedly. " Unhasting yet unresting, " is 
one of the wisest of life's mottoes. No time 
should be wasted, and yet there never should be 
any hurrying. 

No other life accomplishes in the end so 
much as one that goes on with rhythmic move- 
ment, never loitering, never lagging, yet never 
in nervous haste. Hurry mars work of any 
kind. Music is spoiled as much by too great 
rapidity as by indolent dragging. An old 
Bible teaching says, " In quietness and in con- 
fidence shall be your strength." The most 
vigorous of the New Testament writers exhorts 
his young friend to study to be quiet, or as it is 
in the stronger phrase of a revised version, to 
be " ambitious to be quiet." It was not idleness 
that St. Paul was urging upon Timothy, but the 
observance of the proper rests in life. 

We have need of patience. We should learn 
to wait as well as labor, to listen as well as 
speak, to rest as well as toil. There are 
moments and hours in life when the supreme 
duty is to do nothing, to stand quiet and patient, 
waiting trustfully for God to work, or for the 



MINDING THE RESTS. 2 1 5 

time to come when we can act. Immeasurable 
harm has been done ofttimes by impatience 
which could not stand and wait. 

In all our life we need to cultivate a restful 
spirit. No duty is enjoined in the Scriptures 
more frequently than the duty of peace. 
Worry is one of the things that are not worth 
while — it never brings any good ; it never adds 
to the happiness ; it never blesses. Worry 
must be left out of the ideal life. Worry rushes 
on unquietly and does not mind the rests. 
Peace, on the other hand, is an essential element 
in all beautiful, strong, and happy life. Peace 
carefully observes all the rests and produces 
perfect music. It knows how to be quiet and 
still as well as how to speak or sing. 

Sometimes we are compelled to take rests in 
our busy life, even when we have no thought 
of doing so. We are in the midst of a rapid 
movement, hurrying on with great eagerness, 
when suddenly we find a rest written on the 
staff, and we must pause in our music. One of 
the most suggestive words in the Shepherd 
Psalm is the phrase, " He maketh me to lie 



2l6 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

down in green pastures." Sometimes God has 
to make us lie down, for if he did not we would 
never pause for a moment. We really need 
these rests to make the music full and rich, and 
God can get them into our hurried life in no 
way but by compelling us to take them. 

Nature teaches us the necessity for periods 
of inactivity. Winter arrests the growth of 
trees. The long months when there are no 
leaves and no fruits seem to be lost. But we 
know that winter is no mistake, and that the 
time is not lost or wasted when the tree is rest- 
ing. It is only gathering the forces for next 
year's growth and fruitage. Every life, too, 
has its winters, when everything seems to stop ; 
but there is no loss in the quiet waiting. One 
writes : 

" In every life 
There 's a pause that is better than onward rush, 
Better than hewing or mightiest doing; 
'Tis the standing still at sovereign will. 

u There 's a hush that is better than ardent speech, 
Better than sighing or wilderness crying; 
*T is the being still at sovereign will. 



MIXDIXG THE RESTS. 217 

11 The pause and the hush sing a double song 
In unison low and for all time long. 
O human soul, God's working plan 

11 Goes on, nor needs the aid of man ! 
Stand still, and see ! 
Be still, and know ! " 

If only we understood it we should see that 
the rests which God writes into the bars of our 
life are necessary to make the music perfect. 
We think we have lost time when we have been 
sick for a season. Xo ; the passive duty of the 
sick days, when we were shut away from the 
hurrying world, the duty of being quiet and 
patient and trustful, was quite as sacred and im- 
portant as were the urgent duties of the days 
of health. 

" How does the musician read the rest? See 
him beat the time in unerring count and catch 
up the next note true and steady as if no break- 
ing-place had come between. Not without 
design does God write the music of our lives. 
Be it ours to learn the tune and not be dismayed 
at the rests. They are not to be slurred over, 
are not to be omitted, are not to destroy the 



2l8 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

melody nor to change the key-note. If we look 
up, God himself will beat the time for us." It 
is not ours to write the score ; it is ours only to 
sing or play it as God has written it. We have 
no right to change a note or a point, to insert a 
rest or to omit one. We must play it as it is 
given to us. 

When in our life we come to rests which are 
written for us into the great Composer's score, 
we should consider them just as much part of 
the music as are the notes in the other bars. 
We need not complain of loss of time in illness, 
in forced leisure, in frustrated efforts, nor fret 
that our voice had to be silent, our part missing 
in the music. There was no real loss in these 
breaks or pauses. We do our duty best by not 
trying to do anything when God bids us to lie 
still. We need not fret that we cannot be 
active for God when clearly God does not want 
us to be active. She was a submissive Christian, 
and had learned well the secret of peace and the 
meaning of the rests, who accounted for her peace- 
ful quiet on her sick-bed by saying, " I hear God 
saying to me, ' Lie here and cough.' ' That was 



MINDING THE RESTS. 219 

God's will for her then instead of the bidding to 
active service which she used to hear and obey 
so gladly in the days of strength. The truest 
life is the one that takes the music as God writes 
it, without question, believing in his love and 
his wisdom, sure that he is right. 

" In the grand oratorios of life 

God writes us unexpected rests ! 
These break the rush, the strain, the storm, the strife, 

And are our surely needful tests ! 
How these are kept, not reaching for the next, 

Nor clinging to the former strain, 
In perfect waiting, listening for the text 

To make the Master's meaning plain, 
Proves, or disproves, our individual skill. 

" Some high, some low, some intermediate sing; 

Each voice is needful in its part, 
Though one, in solo, rise on peerless wing — » 
Lost in the chorus, one ! An art 
Divinely wise, brings, here and there, a rest. 

And he — I'd tell it o'er and o'er — 
Sings best, who, losing self, interprets best, 

In notes, or rests, throughout the score, 
The Master's grand, eternal, loving will." 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE CURE OF WEARINESS. 

" If we believed, we should arise and sing, 

Dropping our burdens at Christ's pierced feet ; 
Sorrow would flee, and weariness take wing, 
Hard things grow fair, and bitter waters sweet 

" If we believed, what room for fear or care, 

Within his arms, safe sheltered on his breast ? 
Peace for our pain, and hope for our despair, 
Is what he meant who said, ' I give thee rest.' " 

Weariness may be wholesome. It is whole- 
some when it is the natural consequence of earn- 
est, healthful activity. Such weariness finds its 
renewal in rest, and in God's blessing of sleep. 
Blessed is the weariness of youth or of health, 
which is built up into joyous vigor overnight. 
That is a beautiful rendering of an old Psalm 
verse which runs : " He giveth to his beloved 
in sleep. " An old tale tells of the young artist 
who from sheer weariness fell asleep before the 
picture over which he had also grown discour- 



THE CURE OE WEARINESS. 22 1 

aged. Then, while he slept, his master came 
softly into the studio, and, with a few quick, skil- 
ful touches, corrected the errors in the work, 
and brought out the beauty which the pupil had 
dreamed of, and had vainly sought to put upon 
his canvas. 

The story is a true illustration of what God is 
constantly doing for his children when they 
grow weary in their work and fall asleep over 
it. Many a half-wrought-out picture do his hands 
finish overnight. He takes away the discourage- 
ment and puts fresh hope and courage into the 
heart, while his children sleep. Weariness like 
this is full of blessing. We might frame a new 
beatitude, " Blessed are the weary, for they shall 
find God's rest." 

But there is a weariness that is not whole- 
some. There are many people who faint under 
their burdens, and, finding no adequate recuper- 
ative uplift anywhere, sink down in the dark 
floods. Those who have much to do with the 
care of souls, those to whom the weary and dis- 
heartened turn for help and sympathy, know 
how many yield to dispiriting influences, and 



222 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

how hard it is to lift up such hands that hang 
down. Even God's wonderful ministry of sleep 
fails to restore them. Laying down their tasks 
for a time does not bring back the old enthusi- 
asm. Their weariness seems incurable. It is 
not the natural weariness of health at the close 
of a busy day — it is a weariness of spirit. Oft- 
times it is unwholesome — at least, if one had 
learned the full, rich secret of God's peace, one 
would not have fallen under its power. 

Sometimes it is the result of sorrow. We are 
accustomed to think that sorrow always does 
good, makes the sufferer better, sweetens the 
spirit. But there are many who faint under 
chastisement. Instead of getting blessing and 
good from their trouble, they are hurt by it. 
When a great affliction comes, taking out of the 
life its light, its joy, its inspiration, there are 
some who seem unable ever to lift up their 
head again. " There is nothing left now to 
live for," says one ; and no pleading of love, no 
exhortation to duty, seems to recall our friend 
to the old interest in life. 

There is far more of such faintness in the 



THE CURE OF WEARINESS. 223 

ways of trial and grief than the world knows of. 
To many life is never the same after a great 
sorrow. The bereft one does not desire to taste 
joy again. 

" I wish that when you died last May, 
Charles, there had died along with you 
Three parts of Spring's delightful things, 
Aye, and for me the fourth part too." 

Yet this is not the way God wants us to meet 
sorrow. There is no accident in life's bereave- 
ments as God sees them ; they are all provided 
for in his plan for our life. They have their 
place among the means of grace through which 
we are to be fitted for duty. There is a way to 
find rest and renewal in such weariness, if only 
those who suffer thus know how and where to 
find it. God's comfort is a medicine which has 
power to heal the heart's deepest wounds. 
There is a profound meaning in the beatitude, 
11 Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall 
be comforted." It may not mean that sorrow 
itself is a blessing; it may not be a good thing 
to have the heart torn and the life bereft and 
darkened. Indeed, it is not a good thing in 



224 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

itself. Yet there is a secret in it which will 
extract from pain its power to do harm and will 
make it a blessing. The blessing is not in the 
sorrow, but in the comfort ; and the beatitude 
means that God's comfort is so full of good that 
it is well worth while to suffer any affliction, 
that one may obtain the comfort. Verily, this 
weariness, too, God can cure by the ministries 
of his love, as he cures bodily and mental weari- 
ness in sleep. 

There is a weariness, also, of disappointment, 
in which many faint. It is very hard, for ex- 
ample, to be stricken down in broken health, 
not only in the midst of activities, but also when 
the heart is full of great hopes for the future. 
Invalidism is a heavy burden. One must sit in 
his room, or lie on his bed, and see the throngs 
of busy men, among whom yesterday he him- 
self was a leader, move onto their successes and 
their victories, leaving him meanwhile unable 
to take any part in the work or the struggle. 

There is a pathetic story from crusading an- 
nals which illustrates many an experience in 
common life. A crusader, returning from the 



THE CURE OF WEARINESS, 225 

Holy Land, is seized by some nobles while 
crossing hostile territory, and is cast into prison. 
In his cell, one day, some months after the be- 
ginning of his captivity, he hears sounds of far- 
away martial music. As he listens eagerly, he 
knows that the music is drawing nearer. He 
looks out through the grating of his cell, and 
by and by the flash of spears is seen. Nearer 
and nearer still comes the column, and then, 
with wild emotion, the captive discovers that it 
is his own party, the same company of men 
with whom he had gone to war, with whom he 
had fought on sacred ground in Palestine. He 
cries out as the men ride close by his window, 
and cries more loudly, but the music drowns 
his voice. They ride on till all have passed, 
the banners moving out of sight. The last note 
of the receding music falls on his ear, and the 
poor captive is left alone in his hopelessness. 

There are many men who, by reason of 
broken health or some sore misfortune, or 
through narrow limitations, are shut up in a 
dark prison, and compelled to lie there, from 
their dim windows seeing their former compan- 



226 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

ions march by them with gay banners and 
cheerful music, and pass out of sight. It is 
not easy to keep one's spirit brave and strong 
in such an experience. The weariness is apt to 
become faintness, and the faintness to pass into 
the well-nigh incurable sickness of despair. 

What does the religion of Christ have to say 
to a man in such condition? It has a message, 
for, as the gospel views life, there is no human 
hopelessness. It tells us of another sphere in 
life besides that in which success is measured 
by physical activities and material results — a 
sphere in which one may fail to the eyes of men, 
and yet be a glorious success in the sight of 
heaven. Activities are not the only measure 
of living. It is not what we do in a given time 
that tells what real progress we have been mak- 
ing, but what has been done in us. One may 
be accomplishing a great deal, as men look at 
life, and yet really be doing nothing that shall 
last. One may be straining every nerve in ex- 
ertions which seem to produce splendid results, 
and yet be only beating the air. A business 
man, who, after years of energetic work, was 



THE CURE OF WEARINESS. 227 

suddenly stricken down and compelled to He 
for months on his bed, scarcely moving hand 
or foot, one day said to his pastor, " For years 
I have been running my soul thin by my in- 
cessant activities, but in these quiet months I 
have had time to think about my life, and now, 
for the first time in all my experience, I am 
growing." He was learning lessons he never 
could have learned in the rushing restlessness 
of his earlier years. 

We must not think that, because we can go 
on no longer in our chosen course, therefore 
life has nothing more for us. The breaking-up 
and setting-aside of a plan of human ambition 
is ofttimes the making of the man. A young 
woman who had been an intense student of 
music for several years, studying at home and 
abroad, and devoting herself with great enthu- 
siasm to her art, found it necessary to give up all 
her work and rest for a year. She accepted the 
disappointment cheerfully, and turned quietly 
to other occupations. The result was that her 
lost year proved the best year of her life. It 
gave her time for quiet culture, and for read- 



228 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

ing and thought on lines neglected before. The 
influence on her character was enriching and 
sweetening. She was also led into new ex- 
periences which proved gateways into treasure- 
houses of blessing and good she never could 
have found in her eager, unresting life. She 
learned more of the sweetness of friendship than 
she had ever dreamed of before, more too of 
the reality, the tenderness, the infinite satisfac- 
tion of the divine friendship. At the end of 
the year her friends were conscious that she 
had grown in all lovely qualities. What had 
been regarded as a misfortune proved to have 
been divine leading in most gracious ways. 

It is always so. There is never any real need 
for growing discouraged. No matter what the 
condition may be, we may trust God with the 
outcome, while we accept our lot with cheerful- 
ness, and do the duty that comes to our hand. 
There are many things we never can learn in 
the midst of our earthly ambitions, which must 
be learned, if ever, as song-birds learn new 
songs, in darkened rooms. A Christian's rule 
of life should be, never to yield to discourage- 



THE CURE OF WEARINESS. 229 

ment, never to faint in any trouble, but always 
to keep his face toward the light and his heart 
full of song. 

One of the most wonderful words of Christ is 
that in which he forewarns his followers that in 
this world they shall have tribulation, but bids 
them nevertheless be of good cheer, giving as a 
reason that he has overcome the world, and 
therefore in him they may have peace. One 
who believes on Christ is identified with him, 
and shares in all his blessedness, his victorious- 
ness, his peace. There is that great Old Testa- 
ment word, too, which assures us that if our 
mind is stayed on God he will keep us in per- 
fect peace. The comfort is that the keeping is 
God's, not ours, ours being only the staying of 
our mind upon God. 

With such divine words as these on which to 
hope, why should we ever faint or grow weary, 
however broken our life, however desolate our 
home, however we may seem to have failed? 
No life can sink away when it is held in the 
clasp of the everlasting arms. No sorrow can 
strip us bare while we have Christ, and while 



230 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

heaven receives our loved ones. No work for 
God can ever fail, but every golden seed dropped 
in the furrow shall yield a harvest. 

Then there is a final curing of earth's weari- 
ness for all who know Christ in this world. The 
promise of rest while it has precious fulfilment 
in the present life holds its complete fulfilment 
in reserve, until we reach the heavenly life. 
There no one ever shall know weariness. Here 
all growth is toward old age ; there all develop- 
ment is toward youth. It is more than the 
fancy of a mystic that in heaven the oldest 
angels are the youngest. There will be no sick- 
ness there, no sorrow, no trouble. Heaven will 
be a place of noble activity, every immortal 
power at work, but there work will not produce 
weariness. All life will be joy and peace and 
song, and none shall ever be tired. 

" No more going out forever, 

No more sorrow, no more tears; 
Death and pain can harm us never 
Through the glad eternal years. 

" In the glory of His presence, 

Which now lights the jasper sea, 

We will meet the long-lost dear ones, 

Waiting there for you and me." 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

JUDGED AS WE JUDGE. 

44 Not understood. We gather false impressions, 
And hug them closer as the days go by, 
Till virtues seem to us transgressions ; 

And thus men rise and fall, and live and die, 
Not understood. 

" O God ! that men should see a little clearer ; 
Or judge less harshly where they cannot see ! 
O God ! that men should draw a little nearer 
To one another ; they 'd be nearer thee, 
And understood." 

THERE are many of our Lord's teachings 
which we do not take half seriously enough. 
For example, there is what Jesus says about 
judging others : " Judge not, that ye be not 
judged. " This is more than a condemnation of 
uncharitable judging; it is also a revelation to 
us of the fact that our judgments of others 
come back into our own bosom. " For with 
what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged ; 
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be 
measured unto you/' 

231 



232 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

The same teaching is found elsewhere in the 
Scriptures. We get back what we give out. 
This is true of our kindly thoughts and feelings 
towards others, as well as of judgments that are 
harsh and severe. We gather the harvest of our 
own sowing. " Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap," is true in every phase of its 
application. The merciful shall obtain mercy, 
runs the beatitude. A man who is generous in 
his opinions of others receives charitableness of 
opinion in return. Of course, this does not 
mean that if we always treat others gently, others 
will always treat us gently. Kindest-hearted men 
are sometimes used most unkindly. Jesus him- 
self never judged others harshly, and yet he was 
cruelly slain by those he had come to bless. 
The statement is general, and in general it is 
true, that mercifulness in us will make others 
merciful towards us. What we give we shall 
receive. 

This is true on both the divine and the human 
side. The unforgiving cannot get God's for- 
giveness. It is put in the liturgy of penitence 
that we must forgive before we can even ask for 



JUDGED AS WE JUDGE. 233 

forgiveness. " Forgive us our debts, for we 
have forgiven." If we will not show mercy we 
cannot even ask to have mercy shown to us. 
Then, with men, too, sternness finds sternness, 
resentment meets with resentment. He who 
sees no good in others must not be surprised, 
and must not complain, if others fail to see any 
good in him. The man who has only harsh 
words for his fellows cannot expect to hear words 
of love from others concerning himself. 

Human lives are like those echoes that we 
find here and there among the hills, which send 
back every sound that is heard before them. 
You speak, and your words are echoed back to 
your ears. You sing, and your song returns 
again to you. If one talks loudly and angrily, 
one hears loud and angry words reverberating 
in the air. If one speaks gently and sweetly, 
the echo faithfully reports back not the words 
only, but the tone as well. 

Like echoes are our lives ; what they hear 
they reflect back to the speaker's ear and heart. 
So it is that we ma,y find out, in the way others 
treat us, just how we really treat them. They 



234 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

echo into our ears in their judgments of us the 
very things which our lips have spoken concern- 
ing them. Hence our judgments of others are 
really self-revealings. If we are suspicious and 
distrustful of men, we are showing the world that 
in us are causes for" suspicion and distrust. If 
we find selfishness wherever we go, it is an evi- 
dence that we are selfish ourselves. 

This truth has a wide application. A living 
torch and a dead ember were sent forth into the 
world to find out what the world was like. The 
torch returned and reported that there was light 
everywhere. The ember reported that it was 
dark everywhere, with not a ray of light shin- 
ing. 

So do men find in the world just what is in 
themselves. One man says it is a world of sad- 
ness. There is nothing in it but sorrow. All 
its songs are songs of tears. He has not found 
a bit of blue, nor heard a note of gladness in all 
his rounds. Poor man ! it is only the gloom of 
his own heart that he is reporting. He has in 
him no capacity for seeing beauty or for hear- 
ing joy notes. Another man goes out over pre- 



JUDGED AS WE JUDGE. 235 

cisely the same course, hearing the same sounds, 
and seeing the same sights, and he reports that 
he found only music and loveliness everywhere. 
The world was full of sweet songs. On every 
spot flowers bloomed ; everywhere light was 
shining. 

What made the same world so totally differ- 
ent to the two men? The difference was in the 
men themselves. In one the lamp of joy was 
burning, and wherever he went he found light 
— the light of his own life pouring out on all 
things. In the other the lamp had gone out, 
leaving darkness in his own soul. Wherever he 
went, even amid the rarest beauty, he saw noth- 
ing lovely, for he was as one blind. Though 
all about him songs of joy filled the air, he 
heard no sweet note, for he was as one deaf. 

<l In ourselves the sunshine dwells, 

In ourselves the music swells; 
Everywhere the heart awake 

Finds what pleasure it can make, 
Everywhere the light and shade 

By the gazer's eye is made." 

This is a serious teaching, and it has an in- 



236 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

tensely practical side for every one of us. It is 
ourselves that we are discovering all the while 
as we go about judging others. If we seem to 
find all men unjust, unreasonable, proud, vain, 
deceitful, or false, there is enough in the dis- 
covery to startle us. It is the echoes of our 
own heart that we are hearing. It is the revela- 
tion of our own inner self that we are seeing 
reflected. We should seek instantly to find a 
new self, and then we shall find ourselves in a 
new world. 

We should also train ourselves to charitable 
judgments of others. As the faults of our own 
character are corrected, our eyes will become 
clearer, and we shall see others in a truer light. 
Many of our judgments of others are unjust. 
Then even if the faults our eyes seem to see do 
exist, we have no right to pronounce sentence. 
We do not know what reasons there are for 
leniency of judgment. Some day you find a 
man very disagreeable, irritable, easily vexed, 
or unsocial, not disposed to be cordial. You 
are inclined to be impatient with him, perhaps 
even to regard his unhappy mood so seriously 



JUDGED AS WE JUDGE. 237 

as to allow it to break the friendly relations 
which heretofore have existed between you and 
him. 

But does not the better self within you say 
to you that it is not right to make up a final 
judgment from the mood of any one day? You 
do not know what may have occurred to pro- 
duce in your neighbor the spirit which has 
given you such annoyance. It may be ill 
health that has affected him — there are certain 
physical conditions which make it very hard for 
the sufferer to keep sweet. Or something may 
have gone wrong with his business, causing him 
much anxiety. Any one ought to be pleasant 
when all things are prosperous ; but it is a 
much severer test of character to keep pleasant 
when there are reverses, when one is losing 
money, and when one's affairs are in discourag- 
ing condition. 

Or there may be other troubles which no 
neighbor suspects. Not all life's pains cause 
outcry which men hear ; not all griefs hang 
crape on the door. The bitterest sorrows must 
ofttimes be borne in silence and in secret, only 



238 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

God knowing of them. We know not what 
burdens of personal pain and trial any life 
that seems sunny and glad may be bearing. 
Perhaps this may be the cause of the uncon- 
geniality and the unlovableness which so much 
offends you in your neighbor. 

Of course, we may say that none of these 
reasons are sufficient to excuse the man for the 
unpleasant and disagreeable qualities in him 
which so mar the beauty of his disposition, and 
give so much pain and discomfort to others. 
True, he ought to keep loving and gentle and 
cheerful, no matter what is wrong with him, or 
has gone wrong with his affairs. Yet we should 
be charitable, considering ourselves, lest we also 
lose our sweetness some day when the wind is 
from the east. If only we could lift the veil 
that covers people's inner lives, and see all that 
is going on within, all that makes it hard for 
them to keep glad-hearted and songful, we 
would be more charitable toward all. 

" If we knew the cares and trials, 
Knew the efforts all in vain, 
And the bitter disappointment, 
Understood the loss and gain, 



JUDGED AS WE JUDGE. 239 

Would the grim external roughness 
Seem, I wonder, just the same? 

Should we help where now we hinder? 
Should we pity where we blame? 

" Oh ! we judge each other harshly, 

Knowing not life's hidden force, 
Knowing not the fount of action 

Is less turbid at its source; 
Seeing not amid the evils 

All the golden grains of good. 
Oh ! we 'd love each other better 

If we only understood." 

It is Christlike to be patient and charitable 
toward all. Thus only can we help others 
toward anything better and truer. Severe 
judgment never yet brought out the good that 
was hidden in any life, under its mass of faults 
and errors. Nothing but love can save — love 
expects the best of every life, and helps to woo 
it out. If we meet other men's blemishes and 
sins with patience and love, we shall help to 
bring out all the possibilities of good and 
beauty in them. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

EVEBY DAY AN EASTER. 

In Christ I touch the hand of God, 
From his pure height reached down, 
By blessed ways before untrod, 
To lift us to our crown ; 
Victory that only perfect is 
Through loving sacrifice, like his. 

Lucy Larcom. 

EASTER comes in the calendar only once in 
a year, but for the Christian every day is an 
Easter. Each morning we should rise to new- 
ness of life. In midwinter we do not need to 
wait for the coming of springtime to get the les- 
sons of Eastertide. Christ arose once for all and 
the glory of his victory shines everywhere, and 
the power of his resurrection is felt wherever he 
is known and loved and followed. 

Easter ought to leave in every Christian heart 
new inspirations, a new uplift, new revealings 
of hope. It ought to be easier for us to live 
nobly and victoriously after we have enjoyed 

240 



EVERY DAY AN EASTER, 24 1 

another Easter with its great lessons. A wave 
of comfort should roll over the world, as the 
day bears everywhere its news of resurrection. 
Death has been conquered. A grave is no 
longer a hopelessly sealed prison — its doors 
have been broken. This is the message which 
Easter carries to every home of sorrow, to every 
lonely, bereft heart. 

But that is not the whole meaning of the 
Easter lesson. Perhaps we narrow it too much. 
We keep its comfort for the days when death is 
in our home, when we are standing beside the 
graves of our loved ones. Blessed is its message 
then ! It tells us that what to our holden eyes 
seems death is life, and that the grave is but a 
little chamber of peace where our dear one shall 
sleep until the morning. 

M These ashes, too, this little dust, 

Our Father's care shall keep, 
Till the last angel rise and break 
The long and dreary sleep. 

"Then love's soft dew o'er every eye 

Shall shed its mildest rays. 
And the long-silent dust shall burst 

With shouts of endless praise." 



242 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

But the lesson reaches out and covers all life. 
It sheds a glory over every sorrow. It whispers 
hope in every experience of loss. It tells of 
victory, not only over death, but over everything 
in which men seem to suffer defeat, over all 
grief, pain, and trial. Jesus himself stated the 
great principle of the resurrection victory when 
he said, " Except a grain of wheat fall into the 
earth and die, it abideth by itself alone ; but if 
it die, it beareth much fruit. ,, The dropping 
of the grain into the earth, to perish there, is 
not misfortune, not the wasting, the losing, the 
perishing, of the grain; it is but the way by 
which it reaches its full development and comes 
to its normal fruitfulness. 

The little parable had its first interpretation 
in the death of Christ himself. Dying would 
be no misfortune for him ; it was but the way 
to the higher, larger life into which it would in- 
troduce him. He was standing then face to face 
with the problem of his cross. It certainly 
seemed a terrible waste of precious life that was 
demanded. Would it not be better for him to 
avoid the sacrifice and live on, seeking refuge, 



EVERY DAY AN FASTER. 243 

perhaps, in another land? Quickly came the 
answer. The grain of wheat might be withheld 
from the sowing, but it would be only one clean, 
whole, shining grain then, without any increase, 
without any unfolding of its wondrous secret 
of life and fruitfulness. The only way for that 
blessed life to reach its full beauty, and for its 
mystery of good and glory to be wrought out, 
was for it to accept the cross. " If it die, it 
beareth much fruit." 

It is easy to understand how this came true 
in Christ's life after he arose. No doubt his 
friends grieved over his dying, thinking it a 
terrible mistake. If only he had lived on to 
old age, continuing his ministry of love through 
the years, what blessings he would have left in 
the world ! But his death in the blackness of 
crucifixion had quenched the light of his holy 
life. That was the end. What a waste ! But 
we know how mistaken were all these grievings 
and regrettings of love. If Jesus had withheld 
himself from the cross there would have been 
one beautiful life prolonged for a few years 
more of holy teaching and of loving ministry. 



244 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

He gave his life — the grain of wheat fell into 
the ground and died, and we see the harvest 
to-day in Christianity, with all its blessings. 

While this great law received its highest 
illustration in the death and resurrection of 
Jesus Christ, it is also the law of all spiritual 
life. Just after he had spoken his parable of 
the grain of wheat, the Master added, " He that 
loveth his life loseth it ; and he that hateth his 
life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." 
Thus the law is made to apply to all men and 
to all experiences. The way to fulness of life 
is through death. We may save ourselves 
from loss and cost and sacrifice, if we will ; we 
may refuse to make the self-denials which love 
demands of us ; we may indulge ourselves, and 
decline to do the things for others which we 
are called to do, and which would require toil 
and pain. It will seem that we are saving our 
life, but really we are losing it. The way to 
our best in character and in fruitfulness is through 
death. We must die to live : we must lose to 
gain. 

This is the great lesson of Christian life. It 



EVERY DAY AN EASTER. 245 

is not one which applies only to death and the 
hope of immortality : it applies to all life's 
experiences. It does not come in merely once a 
year, with its brightness and its joy; it is a 
lesson for every day, and it has its inspiration 
for us in every phase of living. We are con- 
tinually coming up to graves in which we must 
lay away some hope, some treasure, some joy, 
but from which the thing laid away rises again 
in newness of life and beauty. 

Every call for self-denial is such a grave. 
We come to a point where the law of love 
demands that we give up a pleasure on which 
we had set our heart. If we are not ready for 
the sacrifice, if we cannot make it, the grain of 
wheat abides alone, with no increase, no fruit. 
But if we, in quiet love and faith, do the hard 
duty, accept the self-denial, render the costly 
service, the golden grain falls out of our hand 
into the earth, and dies. Yet it does not 
perish. It lives again, springing up from its 
burial in new and richer life. We lost our 
coveted ease, or our cherished possession, we 
gave up our pleasure and spent our strength in 



246 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

helping another, we forewent our evening's r^st 
and hastened out into the storm to do good, 
but we have a spiritual blessing whose value to 
us far surpasses the little ease, comfort, enjoy- 
^ ment, or rest which we gave up and buried 
away in our garden sepulchre. 

Every call to a hard or costly duty is a seed. 
It lies in our hand — what shall we do with it? 
Shall we keep our little ease, our piece of 
money, our pleasure, our quiet hour? Or shall 
we let it fall into the ground? Some one puts 
it thus : " I was given a seed to keep as mine. 
When I most loved it, I was bidden to bury it 
in the ground. I buried it, not knowing that I 
was sowing." We know what comes from 
sowing — the seed springs up into a plant, 
beautiful, fragrant ; or into grain that waves in 
a golden harvest ; or into a tree on which grow 
luscious fruits. 

But it is not easy to drop our seed into the 
ground. It appears to us like wasting it, losing it, 
throwing it away. We want to keep it. Well, 
if we do, it will be nothing more than it is to- 
day — a pleasure, a coin, an hour of ease. But 



EVERY DAY AN EASTER, 247 

if we give it up in answer to love's call or need, 
it will grow into a great harvest of blessing. 

We do not like the word " duty ; " it seems 
to mean something hard and unpleasant. But 
when we accept it from our Master and take it 
up with love in our heart, it is transformed for 
us into something beautiful. A traveller in 
South Africa tells of picking up a rough pebble. 
As he turned it over in his hand his trained eye 
saw the gleaming of a diamond. Duty may 
have a rough, an unattractive crust, but he who 
accepts*it and looks at it through eyes of love 
sees in it a service for Christ which will yield 
the heavenly treasure of peace and joy. 

"God placed a duty in my hand; 
Before mine eyes could see 
Its rightful form, that duty seemed 
A bitter thing to me. 
The sun of glory rose and shone; 
Then duty I forgot, 
And thought with what a privilege 
The Lord had blessed my lot." 

This is the law of unselfish living. We are 
apt to pity those who are called to deny them- 



248 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

selves for the sake of others, but every call to 
self-denial is a call to a new enrichment of our 
own life as well as to a new service of love which 
shall do good to others. The lower is to be 
^sacrificed for the sake of obtaining the higher. 
As in the grain of wheat is hidden a secret of 
value and growth which can be realized only- 
through the dying of the grain in the earth, so 
in every fragment of human happiness and com- 
fort there is covered up a secret of blessing and 
of good which can be brought out only through 
the losing of it, the giving it up. 

Phillips Brooks has put this truth well in 
these words : " You are called on to give up 
a luxury, and you do it. The little piece of 
comfortable living is quietly buried away under- 
ground. But that is not the last of it. The 
small indulgence which would have made your 
bodily life easier for a day or two, or a year or 
two, undergoes some strange alteration in its 
burial, and comes out a spiritual quality that 
blesses and enriches your soul for ever and ever. 
You surrender some ambition that had exercised 
a proud power over you, in whose train and 



EVERY DAY AN EASTER. 249 

shadow you had hoped to live with something 
of its glory cast on you. You send that down 
into its grave, and that too will not rest there. 
. You surrender a dear friend at the call 
of death, and out of his grave the real power of 
friendship rises stronger and more eternal into 
your life." 

Thus everywhere this truth of the gospel 
comes to us with its divine revealing. We de- 
ceive ourselves whenever we try to save our own 
life, keeping it back from hard duty, from costly ^ 
service, or from sacrifice. The only way to the 
best and the highest is through the losing of the ** 
lower. The rose-leaf must be bruised to get its w- 
fragrance. Love must suffer to reveal its rich- 
est tenderness and beauty. Life is always 
double. There is an outer form in which it 
presents itself to our senses, and there is an 
inner spirit which is the vital quality. But this 
inner, spiritual, immortal element can be found 
only through the dying of the outer and tem- 
porary form. The golden grain must be buried 
in service or sacrifice of love, that from its grave 
may rise that which is unseen and eternal. 



2 SO STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

" When bursts the rose of the spirit 
From its withering calyx sheath, 
And the bud has become a blossom 

Of heavenly color and breath, 
Life utters its true revelation 

Through the silence that we call death." 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE SACREDNESS OP OPPORTUNITY. 

The day is done, its hours have run, 

And thou hast taken count of all — 
The scanty triumphs grace hath won, 

The broken vow, the frequent fall. 
Through life's long day and death's dark night, 
O gentle Jesus, be our light ! 

Grant us, dear Lord, from evil ways 

True absolution and release, 
And bless us more than in past days 

With purity and inward peace. 

Through life's long day and death's dark night, 

O gentle Jesus, be our light ! 

F. W. Faber. 

JESUS said, " Walk while ye have the light, 
that darkness overtake you not." Sometimes 
darkness is very welcome. It is welcome to 
the weary man who can scarcely wait till the 
sun sets to cease his toil. To him darkness 
means rest. It folds him in its curtains, away 
from the noise and strife, and restores his 
exhausted strength. Darkness is welcome in 

251 



252 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

many a home, for it is the signal for the home- 
gathering of loved ones and the joys of the 
evening fireside. All day the hearthstone has 
drawn upon the hearts of the scattered house- 
hold, and the coming of night is the signal for 
the home-gathering. 

But it is not a friendly darkness to which our 
Lord refers. The figure his words suggest is 
that of a wild beast coming upon the traveller, 
pursuing him, overtaking him, pouncing upon 
him, devouring him. Thus it was that Jesus 
urged his disciples to walk in the light while they 
had it, to be quick to use the few moments of 
the day that remained, before the devouring 
darkness should swoop down upon them. 

The lesson is for us. Most of us live as if we 
had a thousand years to stay here. We loiter 
in the golden hours of our little days as if the 
days were never to end. We do not see how 
swiftly the sun is whirling toward his setting 
while our work is but half done, our task per- 
haps scarcely begun. We fritter away days, 
weeks, months, not noticing how our one little 
opportunity of living in this world is being worn 



THE SACREDXESS OF OPPORTUXITY. 253 

off, as the sea eats away a crumbling bank 
till its last shred is gone. We set slight value 
on time, forgetting that we have only a hand- 
breadth of it, and then comes eternity. What 
did you do yesterday that will brighten and 
glorify that day forever? What record of bless- 
ing in other lives did you give it to carry to 
God's judgment? What burden did you lift 
off another heart? What tear did you wipe 
away? On what soul did you leave a mark of 
beauty? Where is your yesterday? 

Many of us fail to appreciate the value of 
single days. A day is so short a space, we 
say, that it cannot make much difference if one, 
just one, is dropped, or idled away in pleasure. 
Yet the days are links in a chain, and if one 
link is broken the chain is broken. In God's 
plan for our life each little day has its own 
burden of duty, its own record to make. Then 
we never know the sacredness of any particular 
day, what it may have amid its treasures for us. 
Its sunshine may be no brighter than that of 
other days, there may be no peculiar feature in 
it to mark it among a thousand common days, 



2 54 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

and yet it may be to us a day of destiny. If 
we fail to receive it as God's gift we may miss 
and lose that without which we shall be poorer 
all our life and in eternity. 

How often do we see afterward that the days 
which are gone were bearers to us of heavenly 
gifts which we had not the wit to recognize nor 
the grace to take? When they have passed 
beyond recall, then we see what we missed in 
disregarding them. How these lost days shame 
us as they turn their reproachful eyes upon us 
out of the irrevocable past ! 

" Their advent is as silent as their going; 
They have no voice, nor utter any speech, 
No whispered murmur passes each to each, 
As on the bosom of the years' stream flowing, 
They pass beyond recall, beyond our knowing, 
Farther than sight can pierce or thought can reach; 
Nor shall we ever hear them on Time's beach, 
No matter how the winds of life are blowing. 

* k They bide their time, they wait the awful warning 
Of that dread day, when, hearts and graves unsealing, 
The trumpet's note shall call the sea and sod 
To yield their secrets to the sun's revealing; 
What voices then shall thrill the judgment morning, 
As our lost days shall cry aloud to God !" 



THE SACREDNESS OF OPPORTUNITY. 2$$ 

" Walk while ye have light, lest darkness 
come upon you." There are many illustrations 
of this coming of darkness, this ending of 
opportunity. The lesson touches every one's 
life. There is the darkness that comes as 
season after season of privilege closes. Here 
the teaching is specially for the young. "Some 
things God gives often ; some only once. The 
seasons return again and again, and the flowers 
change with the months, but youth comes twice 
to none." Youth is the time for preparation. 
The success of the after-life depends upon the 
diligence of the first years. A wasted youth is 
followed by the darkness of misfortune and 
failure. 

Youth is the time to gather knowledge. It is 
the time, too, to form good habits. It is the 
time to make good friendships. It is the time 
to find Christ. It is the time to train the facul- 
ties for their best work in life. It is the time 
to prepare for life's business. When youth 
closes, with its opportunities, leaving one un- 
ready for the days of stress, struggle, duty, and 
responsibility that must come, perilous indeed 



256 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY, 

is the darkness that wraps the life and drags it 
down. 

Many young people are wasteful of time. 
They fail to realize its value. They appear to 
have it in such abundance that they never dream 
it can end. They do not know that a day lost 
in golden youth may mean misfortune or failure 
for them sometime in the future. They do not 
know that missed lessons, squandered hours, 
minutes spent in idleness, may cost them the 
true success of their life, bringing failure or dis- 
aster, and may even blight their destiny. Young 
people should walk earnestly while they have 
the light, redeeming the time, buying up the 
opportunity, lest darkness overtake them. They 
should not make the mistake of imagining 
they have so much time that they can afford to 
let days or hours or even minutes be wasted. 
They cannot afford to lose one golden minute 
of any day. That may be the very minute of 
all that day on which their destiny hangs. 

Says a thoughtful writer: " One of the illu- 
sions is that the present hour is not the critical, 
decisive hour. Write it on your heart that 



THE SACREDNESS OF OPPORTUNITY. 257 

every day is the best day in the year. No man 
has learned anything rightly, until he knows 
that every day is doomsday. " This is very 
true. We know not what momentous issues, 
affecting all our future, are involved in any 
quietest hour of any commonplace day. There 
is a time for everything, but the time is short, 
and when it is gone and the thing is not done 
it never can be done. 

" Never comes the chance that passed; 
That one moment was its last." 

" Walk while ye have the light, that darkness 
overtake you not." While you have your eyes, 
use them. A young man was told by his phy- 
sicians that in six months he would be blind. At 
once he set out to look upon the most beautiful 
scenes in nature and the loveliest works of art 
in all parts of the world, so that, before his 
eyes were closed forever, his memory might be 
stored with visions of beauty to brighten the 
darkness into which he was surely moving. Use 
your eyes while you have the light. See as 
many as possible of the lovely things God has 



258 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

made. Read the best books you can find and 
store your mind with great and noble thoughts. 
Learn while it is easy to learn. Be a student. 
Be a worker, too. Fill your days full of intense 
activities, for it will be only a little while till 
darkness shall overtake you, when you can work 
no more. What you do you must do quickly. 
What you make of your life, you must make in 
a few years at the most, for the human span is 
short, and any day may be the last one. 

" I was not resolute in heart and will 
To rise up suddenly and seek thy face, 
Leaving the swine husks in the desert place, 
And crying, * I have sinned, receive me still ! ' 

" I could not even at the Shepherd's voice 
Startle and thrill, with yearnings for the fold, 
Till he should take me in his blessed hold, 
And lay me on his shoulder and rejoice. 

" But lying silent, will-less in the dark, 
A little piece of silver, lost from thee, 
I only knew thy hands were seeking me, 
And that I bore through all thy heavenly mark." 

The lesson is for those who are in life's prime 
and for those who are advancing toward old 



THE SACREDNESS OF OPPORTUNITY. 259 

age, as well as for the young. Every day that 
passes leaves life's margin a little less for each 
of us. Our allotment of time is ever shorten- 
ing. We must work while the day lasts. We 
must do good while our hearts are warm. We 
must speak the words of life before our lips 
grow dumb. We must scatter kindnesses in 
the world before our hands grow feeble. We 
must pour out love to bless the lonely before 
our pulses are stilled. 

We must not crowd God's work out of our 
busy days, hoping to have time for it by and 
by, when leisure comes. Ah ! by and by it 
will be too late. Those who need us now will 
not need us then. The deeds of love which 
we should do to-day we cannot do to-morrow. 
The neighbor who now longs for our warm 
sympathy and gentle ministry will not need us 
when our tasks have been finished and we have 
leisure ; there will be crape on the door then, 
and there will be no use in our calling with our 
word of love. 

* k When I have time, the friend I love so well 
Shall know no more these weary toiling days. 



260 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

I'll lead her feet in pleasant paths always, 
And cheer her heart with words of sweetest praise, 
When I have time. 

' l When you have time ! The friend you hold so dear 
May be beyond the reach of your sweet intent, 
May never know that you so kindly meant 
To fill her life with sweet content, 
When you have time." 

The child needs the father's care, guidance, 
counsel, and loving patience — now. A few 
moments given each day would make indelible 
impressions upon the boy's soul, and bind him 
fast with chains of gold about the feet of God. 
But a little later it may be no use to try to bless 
his life. He will have passed beyond the period 
when even a father's hand can mould his life. 

Never leave out of your busy days love's 
duties to your heart's own, whatever else you 
may leave out. It were better to miss almost 
anything else in life than what affection de- 
mands. Work while you have the light; do 
the things that are most important, most sacred, 
most vital. 

Over the doorway of the Cathedral of Milan 
is the inscription : " Only the eternal is impor- 



THE SACREDNESS OF OPPORTUNITY. 26 1 

tant." There are a great many things it is not 
worth our while to do. Some of us spend our 
days in poor trivialities which bless no one, 
and which will add no lustre to our crown. 
" Only the eternal is important." Therefore 
" Walk while ye have the light, that the dark- 
ness overtake you not." Waste no opportunity. 
Despise no privilege. Squander no moment. 
There is just time enough in God's plan for you 
to live your life well if you spend every moment 
of it in earnest, faithful duty. One hour lost 
will leave a flaw. A life thus lived in unbroken 
diligence and faithfulness will have no regrets 
when the end comes. Its work will be com- 
pleted. It will not be night that then overtakes 
it in the mystery which men call death, but day, 
rather, the morning of eternity. 

" Turn thy face unto the wall, 
The weary day is done; 
Be thy doings great or small, 
Night draweth darkly on; 
Thou no more hast part in all 
The work beneath the sun; 
Turn thy face unto the wall, 
For day is done ! 



262 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 

u Fold thy hands to peaceful rest 
And happy dreams of home; 
Lay them crosswise on thy breast — 

No more thy feet shall roam. 

The shadows deepen in the west, 

And night is come ! 

" Weep not thou with sorrow bowed, 
Low in the dust to lie; 
The sun for aye behind the cloud 

With gladness fills the sky; 
E'en now he lifts his banner proud, 
For morning is nigh ! " 



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